


the waning star of winter

by akc



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Banter, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, M/M, Sharing a Bed, domestic activities such as Fishing and Hunting and Setting Up a Fireplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akc/pseuds/akc
Summary: It was two days ago that they had defeated Edelgard, and two days ago that they had a somber celebration, and two days ago that Sylvain had tapped Felix on the shoulder and askedwill you run away with me?Two days ago, against all odds, Felix said yes.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 42
Kudos: 334





	1. JOURNEY

**Author's Note:**

> sylvain can have little a escapism, as a treat

ACT I: JOURNEY

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it—to be fed so much love I couldn’t take it anymore. Just once.”  
Haruki Murakami, _Norwegian Wood  
  
_

It is just a few minutes past noon, and Sylvain is immensely hungry despite having just eaten lunch.

He had pheasant. It was a fine thing to have for lunch, honestly; he’s just hungry in general today, which is unfortunate because he cannot eat anything else until the evening. This is due to the fact that he is more or less in the middle of nowhere. Food tends to be a limited thing in these sorts of scenarios.

The _good_ part is that he’s in the middle of nowhere with Felix. And, really, they would both be able to navigate their way back to the monastery from where they are now, so it isn’t as though they’re _lost_ or anything like that. They aren’t going to head back, though, because the monastery is precisely the place that they are running away from.

 _Running away_ is used loosely here. They’re planning on returning in around two weeks time, so it’s more like an avant garde vacation that requires mild levels of food and water rationing—until they get to their destination, at least. 

It was two days ago that they had defeated Edelgard. It was two days ago that they had defeated Edelgard, and two days ago that they had a somber celebration, and two days ago that Sylvain had tapped Felix on the shoulder and asked _will you run away with me?_

Two days ago, against all odds, Felix said _yes._

Sylvain understands that he cannot possibly hope to run away from his responsibilities forever. This is not his goal. It’s just that war is an extremely draining thing, especially ones that last over five years long. Simply put, Sylvain is _tired._ He is _exhausted,_ even, and being around everybody else is exhausting too. He’s sick of being exhausted, and sick of being sick of being exhausted.

He didn’t want to run away by himself, of course, because that’s no fun at all, but he couldn’t bring Dimitri along—that would cause problems for the whole continent—and he couldn’t bring Ingrid, either, because Sylvain knew that she would decline the offer. This made Felix more or less his first best option, which he didn’t mind, because they’re friends, and surely friends can do things like _run away together._

It’s still absolutely baffling as to why Felix agreed to come along.

 _There’s a cabin,_ Sylvain had explained to him over not-enough-whiskey. _It’s about forty five miles north from here. Furnished and stuff. There’s a fireplace, too. Nobody lives there. It’s like one of those… rest stop sort of places, you know? I discovered it when I had to deliver a message to a town that was a few miles past it._

This was the truth. Ever since he had come upon that cabin, Sylvain went out of his way to check on it every now and then. Nobody was ever there. No smoke ever came out of the chimney. It was perfect, he thought. It was a perfect place to run away to if he ever needed it. 

He needed it.

Sylvain had been thinking about the cabin a lot in the few weeks that led up to the final battle against Edelgard—he had been thinking about how nice it would be to escape and live there in peace and quiet, just for a little while. Just until he started feeling like a human being again and not some mannequin with a spear glued into its palm.

And, well. Sylvain is the ambitious type. Once he sets his mind on something, he has to have it. And this particular escapism was one of those things that he really wanted, which meant that it was something that was going to happen one way or another.

This is also the explanation as to why he cannot eat until the evening. He and Felix couldn’t bring along too much food, otherwise they would be carrying too much weight—and some of the food is for their horses—but when they arrive at the cabin, it will be well into the night. He has no plans to dawdle around hunting for food once they arrive. He wants to do nothing but _lie down_ and _stare at the ceiling mirthlessly._

They’ve already been traveling for a while. Sylvain figured that it would be best to leave early in the morning, considering that it typically takes him just over twelve hours to make the trip, and wandering around long after dark in the cold is a less than desirable situation. Fortunately, the sun is still high in the sky, and they’re making great time thus far, so Sylvain isn’t really worried.

Plus, Felix is considerably hardy, and in more ways than one. He’s sitting on a log right now, banging his boot against the side of it to get off some mud stuck to the underside in a fruitlessly repetitive manner. Sylvain watches him, eyebrows knit high up on his forehead, a small smile on his lips. 

This is the kind of behavior that practically begs Sylvain to make a remark about. “Aren’t you being a little aggressive?” he asks, gesturing to the boot with his pinky finger.

Felix makes a face, but does not look at Sylvain. “No.” Affective pause. “I wouldn’t have to be aggressive if the mud would just come off.”

“How about, hm, using your hands? Or a stick, maybe?” Sylvain picks up a twig by his foot and waves it around flagrantly. “Might be easier than brute force.”

Instead of saying something like, _yeah, Sylvain, that’s a great idea,_ Felix’s face simply dissolves into a scowl before he shoves his boot back onto his foot and starts tying up the dozen laces. 

It is fascinating how he is able to get so agitated over a stick. 

“Okay, fine, no stick,” Sylvain mumbles, standing slowly, as if he were a creaky old man resting in a rocking chair. “Does that mean you’re ready to go?”

“Hmph,” Felix says, helpful.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Great.” Sylvain points his face up at the sky and closes his eyes, taking in a deep breath and savoring the fresh air. War has made him thankful for things like that—like fresh air and moments of silence longer than thirty seconds. These are things that do not come as easy and frequently as everyone assumes them to. 

On one hand, Sylvain supposes that he is appreciative of the fact that he has learned to enjoy the _little things in life_ as a result of fighting for so long and so frequently; on the other hand, though, it is unbelievably irritating that in order to gain this knowledge, he also had to start having more nightmares. Part of him wishes that he had just read a self-help book instead.

“Are _you_ ready to go?” Felix asks, who is suddenly standing right next to Sylvain and snapping his fingers in rapid succession. “What are you doing?”

“I’m—enjoying the fresh air,” Sylvain replies, feeling dumb now that he’s admitting to it aloud. “Sorry. I’m good to go now, yeah.” 

From the way that his eyes are narrowing, Sylvain can tell that Felix doesn’t trust any of the words that he has just said. That’s fair, he supposes. 

The so-called end of the war has made Felix even more irritable. One would think that perhaps this would make him finally lighten up a little bit—at least, that’s what Sylvain had thought—but that assumption was regrettably wrong. Maybe what he needs is some time to settle down and breathe. Maybe what he needs is a quiet morning and an uneventful evening. 

Maybe.

It’s frustrating that Felix is all wound up, because Sylvain would really like to pick his brain about a few things once they’ve gotten accustomed to the cabin (one of these things being exactly why he agreed to “run away” in the first place), but that clearly isn’t something that’s going to happen for a few days. Whatever. Whatever! Sylvain has decided that he will be patient. 

“Do you have an idea of how far away we are?” Felix asks. He’s pulling his hair out of its ponytail; the band is held between his incisors and it makes his speech muffled.

Sylvain shrugs. “We’re probably halfway there, I’d say. We got lucky what with the weather being so mild today.”

“Hm.” Felix pulls his hair back up and sighs. “All right, then.”

That’s a reassuring enough reply as any else. At least neither of them have done much complaining so far—save for the mud-on-boots aggression—but there’s plenty of time left in the day for them to do that.

 _And plenty of time left to argue,_ Sylvain thinks. He knows that it probably won’t help him to anticipate an argument, but he has to at least _vaguely_ make the consideration in his head.

It’s strange—Sylvain isn’t even sure what they argue about now. If anything, it’s less traditional arguing and more _squabbling_ like two cockatoos would to one another. During the height of the war, they either had days that were perfectly argument-free or days that consisted of _only_ bickering. It started getting rough after a while. There are only so many different ways that two people can fight about training regiments. 

He doesn’t want to argue with Felix. 

“Okay,” Sylvain says, mostly to himself. He hoists himself up onto his horse, takes one last deep breath, and looks forward.

* * *

Unfortunately, the good weather did not last for long. Soon it begins to rain—soon it begins to _pour_ is more like it—and within minutes Sylvain is completely drenched to the point that his hair flops ungraciously into his eyes. He can only imagine what it’s like for Felix, who is riding behind him, out of view. 

For the most part, though, they travel relatively uninterrupted for a few hours with exception to the rain. There isn’t much to say to one another, Sylvain supposes—at least perhaps not right now. In order to hold a conversation they would have to do a great deal of shouting at one another, because the sound of the rain and the horses’ feet are considerably loud.

There are pros and cons to the journey so far, as there always are. At least this time around the stakes aren’t as high; they don’t have to worry too much about being suddenly intercepted by an entire enemy army. That’s a positive, Sylvain thinks. And they’re still making steady progress even with all the rain. Another positive.

But they cannot travel forever, of course, because the horses get tired after some time and they have to feed them, and admittedly, the boots that Sylvain is wearing are giving him awful blisters on his Achilles. They’re almost certainly bleeding by now; this is what he gets for using new boots without breaking them in first.

They decide to take their second break just after they pass through a large cluster of trees. Sylvain had gotten hit in the face with one branch too many, and based on the incessant grumbling sounds he could hear behind him, Felix had too. Combined with the blisters, things were starting to get uncomfortable. At least the rain had died down to a drizzle.

 _We’ll be there soon,_ Sylvain thinks to himself, unhelpful.

The ground has temporarily turned into the equivalent of a small pond, so Felix and Sylvain drag together a couple of large rocks and rotten tree logs to place their rucksacks on. Every time Sylvain takes a step, his socks go _squishsquishsquish_ and it’s enough to make him want to dry heave. 

“You hungry?” he asks Felix, who is digging around in one of their bags. Sylvain has sat himself down precariously on one of the rocks—it’s much too small for his body size, but there is quite literally nothing he can do about it—and is in the process of yanking his boots off as if they were slowly starting to boil his feet.

“Not particularly,” Felix says. The honesty of his answer is debatable because he suddenly stops searching through the bag and crosses his arms in a manner that reads _frustrated_ in big shining letters. Sylvain doesn’t challenge him, though, and simply sets his boots down next to him with an overdramatic sigh. He wonders which bag he packed the extra socks in. 

He wonders enough to ask. “Which bag did I put the extra socks in?”

Felix immediately goes back to rummaging through the same bag. He pulls out a pair of socks. “These ones?”

“Yeah, those.” Pause. “Can I have them?”

Felix hands them over without saying anything else and then continues looking for… something. Sylvain almost considers asking, but decides not to on the offchance that Felix is in fact hungry and refuses to admit it.

Sylvain’s stomach gurgles. _You’re projecting your emotions onto him,_ it says. _No I’m not,_ he replies.

He’s not going to debate his internal organs over this, so he gets to work tearing off his socks and checking on the blisters which are, sure enough, bleeding. Sylvain morosely wishes that he had learned some healing magic.

“You’re making a lot of facial expressions,” Felix says. He’s started feeding their horses, which almost makes Sylvain feel bad for sitting around and staring at his socks. Almost. “Are you okay? Do you need to go back or something? Did I travel all the way out here just for you to wimp out?”

Sylvain waves a dismissive hand. “I’m fine, I just—blisters. I have blisters on my heels from these stupid boots.” 

“Need bandages? I brought some along.”

“Uh—sure, that’d be great.” He didn’t know that Felix had brought along bandages. It’s a good thing, because Sylvain had been too forgetful to pack them. 

Once again Felix’s hands disappear into a bag—a separate one this time—and then shortly reappear with what looks like a bundle of gauze. He wobbles over to Sylvain, trying and failing to not step in any puddles. _So much for the time he spent trying to get mud off his boots._

“It might sting,” Felix says, ripping the gauze with his hands. “I had Annette put some oils or something into it. She explained it but I wasn’t really listening. It—”

“Whoa, wait,” Sylvain interrupts, holding up a hand. “What are you doing?”

Felix’s hands are hovering just above Sylvain’s ankle. “What do you mean, _what are you doing?_ I’m putting the bandages on.”

“You don’t have to do that, seriously.” Though Sylvain is mildly startled by Felix’s offer, he doesn’t want to make him have to do anything that he doesn’t need to. Plus, he’s ticklish. “But thanks. I’m flattered.”

“Whatever,” Felix mumbles, already turning around and heading back to the horses. Sylvain is so amused by this whole exchange that his eyebrows are practically stapled to his forehead. 

Well, anyway. Back to the task at hand. Sylvain fixes up his blister situation and slides his socks back on, glad to be wearing something that doesn’t mimic the sensation of standing in a lake with boots on.

Once his shoes are secured again, Sylvain stands back up and heads on over to his bag to deposit his gross wet-sandbag-equivalent socks. Who knows if they’ll ever be usable again; at the very least, he can try hanging them above the fireplace tonight to see if they’ll be salvageable. If he remembers, that is.

Sylvain wishes for the second time in the past thirty minutes that he studied magic skills.

Truthfully, he hadn’t done much studying at all during the academy days. Sylvain’s brain was lucky in that it essentially absorbed all the material taught during lectures like a sponge. He was also pretty naturally skilled at using a spear—and because he found that there wasn’t much of a need for him to spend copious amounts of time studying, he instead simply focused on training.

He remembers how much it irritated Felix. He remembers how unsubtly jealous he would get. It was sort of funny to watch, honestly, because while Sylvain had plenty of extra time to fuck around, Felix was often stuck indoors, somberly studying. It must have been particularly frustrating for him, too, considering how much Felix enjoys training.

It bothered him significantly less during the war.

And they didn’t really talk about _studying,_ per se, during the war. They talked about things like food rations and Dimitri and battle formations and dinner plans and training equipment and women. Felix brushed off nearly half of these topics whenever they were brought up, though, so their conversations were more restricted than it seems.

Sylvain looks over to Felix, who is turned away and cleaning up the horse feed by unglamorously shoving it back into its respective bag. He seems… tense, almost, as if there’s something he’s holding back. Come to think of it, he’s been acting like that their whole journey so far. It’s written all over the lines of his face.

It would be best not to push him, though. For a moment, Sylvain wonders if Felix is regretting coming along, but that probably isn’t it—if he was regretting it, he would have simply left. He’s not the type to waste time doing things he doesn’t want to do for the sake of other people. At least, not up until this point of his life.

Sylvain admires Felix shoulders. Then he coughs. “So, uh. You good to go?”

He’s trying to be tentative. It’s working a little bit, because Felix doesn’t sigh passive aggressively. “Just give me a minute,” he mumbles, looking up at the sky.

“Sure, but—what are you doing?” 

Felix says nothing for a few seconds, and then he faces Sylvain again. “I’m enjoying the fresh air,” he says, eyes full of something inexplicable. 

* * *

It remains cloudy for the rest of the day.

It sure would be nice for the sun to come out one last time before dusk, but Sylvain supposes that cloudy weather is still better than rain or snow. 

Unfortunately, the massive puddles remain on the ground and seem to increase in size the further north that they travel. Water flies up in all directions while their horses gallop up hills and down hills and on pathways and off pathways. It’s definitely annoying, to say the least, and worrisome at most.

Sylvain decides that it would be best for them to stop and have one last rest, because his lower spine is starting to feel as though it is made up entirely of herniated discs, which isn’t pleasant in the slightest. He is so looking forward to laying in a bed.

It’s funny, because Sylvain had been through much, _much_ worse during the war; compared to some of the traveling he used to do, this excursion is absolutely nothing at all. A walk in the park, perhaps. A vacation. Something that might be in a hiker’s guidebook. 

He supposes that the magic of this trip is the cabin itself, not the twelve-hour horseride _to_ the cabin. Maybe that’s why he feels as though he’s complaining about every minor inconvenience tenfold. To be fair, Sylvain thinks that he’s entitled to a little bit of complaining. Just a little.

They pull off to a lone, dilapidated stone farm shed that has moss and weeds growing out of places that don’t seem botanically possible. Sylvain dismounts from his horse and steps onto one of the stones, careful to avoid the mud puddle beneath him. When he stands up straight, his back cracks in several different places, and he feels about as unfortunately vulnerable as a piece of glass on a freeway.

Felix also manages to make himself vulnerable, but in a completely different manner, because when he slides off his horse, he lands smack into a puddle of mud.

Sylvain bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing. 

“Fuck,” Felix says, voice very soft for someone in his situation. “Fuck.”

“Whoa,” Sylvain manages, staring at the scene from his rock-perch. “That sucks.”

Felix has yet to move from where he stands. His face conveys the same emotion as if he were about to be launched out of a cannon and into space. “It went in my shoes.”

“Yeah, I can see that. You need help?”

For a moment, Felix continues to simply stand there; Sylvain wonders if he’s trying to will time to go backwards. _If that’s his goal,_ he thinks absentmindedly, _it isn’t working._

He seems to regain his thoughts after a few seconds pass, thankfully, and Felix gently nudges his horse out of the way so that he can step onto the broken. There, he stares at his feet, dismal. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What? What do you mean?” Sylvain asks, playing dumb.

“Why didn’t you say anything about the _puddle?_ ” He finds a place to sit down. “You know, the mud that I just stepped in?”

“I assumed you were observant enough to notice it,” Sylvain says, easy as pie, “so I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, well. I wasn’t.”

“It isn’t like you.” Sylvain taps his finger against his chin as if he were a novice detective, which he sometimes does to agitate Felix. “Does that mean you’re deep in thought?”

“No.” Pause. “I don’t have anything important to think about.”

“Okay, seriously, I don’t believe you. I wouldn’t believe you if you paid me to.”

“Hmph.” Felix starts taking his boots off. This all feels very familiar. “Then what, pray tell, would I be so deep in thought about?”

“Me,” Sylvain says, jokingly. Mostly jokingly. “Or my horse, maybe.”

Felix makes a facial expression that, if one tilted their head enough, might read _yeah, that’s what I was thinking about._ Sylvain doesn’t tilt his head far enough, though, and so it is lost on him. Instead he laughs and waves his hand around. “I’m just kidding, though. Don’t look at me like I’m a worm or something.”

“I’m not—okay.” Felix takes a deep, clarifying breath. “I’m not looking at you like that.”

“Still, I’m seriously just joking.” Sylvain frowns. “Are you okay, though? For real?” Thinking about it now, it _isn’t_ like Felix at all to make such a juvenile mistake and not notice the puddle, especially after so much rain. 

_Maybe he’s just tired,_ Sylvain thinks. Could be likely. They got up pretty early today; then again, it seems like Felix always gets up early to do an inscrutable amount of training before the sun even rises. So.

“I’m fine,” Felix says, looking off to the side. Sylvain is no detective—and if he was, he would certainly be walking around wearing a monocle to prove it—but he’s inclined to believe that Felix has a _secret_ that he’s not sharing.

He’s not going to pry just yet. No, Sylvain is going to be very patient and wait until they’ve settled into the homey-cabin life for a couple of days before he starts his questioning. He had told himself this earlier, but now he’s going to wait on it for certain. 

In the meantime, Sylvain figures that it might be best to simply turn a blind eye to Felix’s weirder-than-usual behavior so that they can make it to the cabin in one piece. “All right, if you say so,” he replies after a long moment of silence. “Are your boots good, though?”

“The mud made them disgusting, but they’re still usable. Would be nice if I had something to wash them off with.” Felix has a rock in his hand, currently, and is using it to scrape off the mud. “I’m not going to be able to get the mud out from around the laces unless I use a pickaxe.”

“Unfortunately I don’t have a pickaxe on me,” Sylvain says with a sigh. “But I promise that when we get to the cabin, I’ll wash them off _for_ you. How’s that sound?”

“How are you going to do that?” Pause. “Where are we going to get water from anyway?”

Sylvain makes a face. “I didn’t tell you that there’s a pond next to the cabin?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Huh.” That seems like a pretty handy piece of information to know. Whoops. “Well, there’s a pond. And I packed along some—water filtering shit. The ones that we would use on our way to battles.”

“I’m surprised you found those,” Felix mutters.

Sylvain flashes an innocuous smile. He imagines that his teeth would be glinting right now if there were enough sunlight. “I kind of hoarded them. You never know when you’ll need water filtered.” 

At first glance, Felix appears to be absolutely baffled by this statement, but then he does something with his shoulders that looks almost like a shrug. “I guess that’s true.”

“ _Definitely_ true _,_ ” Sylvain corrects, raising a finger up in the air like a teacher would. 

Felix scoffs and goes back to his rock-and-boot tinkering. He might take a while, it seems, so Sylvain lays down on the shed debris and closes his eyes, just for a moment.

* * *

The moment of rest was short lived, because after a few minutes, Felix was already tossing sticks onto Sylvain’s chest. Apparently his boots were fine. _Better than what I thought,_ he had claimed while still holding a stick.

Sylvain wasn’t sure what to make of this statement, mainly because it doesn’t seem likely to be true at all. But as he’s promised— _no stirring the pot yet_. And so, as per the protocol, he simply smiled and nodded in a vague enough fashion to get by.

They managed the rest of the travel in silence. It’s nice that they didn’t face any real issues, unless the mud incident or Sylvain’s pathetic hunger counts as something. Although the sun never returned, by the time dusk came rolling along a lot of the overhead grey clouds had begun to dissipate, leaving a nice view of the moon in their wake. 

The moon was bright in the sky. It was like Betelgeuse. 

* * *

They arrive at the cabin, for the most part, right on schedule. 

There isn’t anything to illuminate the pond or general outside area, though, which is just a little bit annoying because Sylvain doesn’t like not knowing what he might step in. Once again: he wishes that he had learned some magic. 

Felix knows some magic—but unfortunately none of which happen to procure fire. If Sylvain remembers correctly, he can use thunder and something else. Something flashy. It might begin with the letter _t._

They’re fire magic-less, but thankfully Sylvain brought along an army and a navy worth of matches in one of the bags. Once he’s off his horse, it takes him just a moment to find one of the matches, which he uses to light the torches on the cabin’s exterior. 

Sylvain slings the bag over his shoulder.

“There,” he says, awfully proud of himself, “now we can see.”

And there certainly is a lot to see. It’ll definitely be better in the morning, but the torches alone give a nice view of the cabin’s shape as well as part of the dock that leads out onto the pond a few meters away. 

The cabin appears to be made of very old wood—old enough that its paint has been significantly chipped and washed away. The ground is mostly pebbles, dirt, and occasional grass patches and weeds. Sylvain will admit that it isn’t the most gorgeous thing in the world, but then again, they’re up north _and_ (essentially) in the middle of nowhere. The cabin deserves to be cut some slack.

Felix slides off his horse. “Is there anywhere to put them?” he asks, gesturing at the horses. 

“Yeah, in the back there’s a small stable thing.” Pause. “If you go and take them in, I can light a fire in the fireplace and, uh, make you some tea? Pretty please?”

Felix makes a face that very thoroughly conveys the word _no,_ but then his expression softens. “Fine,” he says, patting one of the horses. The gesture makes Sylvain smile for some reason. “But you still need to clean my boots.”

“Oh, damn.” He had already forgotten about that. “Right, yeah. I’ll make you tea, and clean your boots, and then I’ll tuck you in and pat you on the head and tell you sweet dreams.”

“You—” Felix makes a wide variety of shapes with his mouth, appearing both shocked and irritated at the same time, and Sylvain doesn’t feel like analyzing them right now so he opens the door to the cabin instead.

“There’s only one bed, by the way,” he adds, hand on the doorknob. “So pick your side.”

Then he shuts the door and sets down the bag on what he thinks is a table. It’s hard to see; the cabin would be completely pitch black without the dim light from the torches that glows through the windows.

After some rummaging, Sylvain finds more matches and pulls them out. He starts off by lighting some of the hanging lanterns around the cabin before moving onto the fireplace. 

There isn’t any wood. Sylvain puts his hands on his hips and stares at the ground when he realizes this.

Or—maybe there is. The cabin is small: it’s square shaped save for a small protruding section to the side, and includes the basic essentials a person might need to exist comfortably. In the back left corner there is a kitchen and the fireplace and some cabinets, and to the back right is the bed and some chests. There’s even more storage in the front next to a couple of chairs and the table.

Right. The cabin is small, and there’s a lot of storage, which means that there surely _has_ to be some firewood laying around that he can use for at least one night.

Sylvain figures he should check the largest storage area first, so he opens up the handle to a large cupboard that sits near the table. And—man, he’s one lucky guy, because there’s firewood inside the cupboard, resting there plain as day.

What a treat. Usually good things don’t happen to Sylvain. 

He pulls a couple out from the cupboard and bundles them up into his arms. The wood doesn’t seem damp, which is pretty impressive, considering how its been doing nothing but sitting in a dark space for goddess-knows-how-long. Maybe magic was involved. Maybe a miracle was involved. Whichever it is, Sylvain doesn’t care, he’s just happy to have some firewood.

He sticks the wood into the fireplace and positions it to his liking. Thanks to hours and hours of setting fireplaces up for Dimitri—he doesn’t like being in the dark, and Sylvain didn’t mind—he’s gotten pretty adept at this. Once he strikes a couple of matches, it doesn’t take him long to get the fire going; there’s a bellows leaning against the wall which helps significantly. 

Soon, the entire cabin glows a gentle orange.

Felix chooses now to swing the door open. The light from the fireplace and lanterns dances across the lower half of his face, alongside his jaw and up the curve of his neck. It makes him look… imperceptibly tired. Sylvain wonders if he’s aware of how grey his skin is underneath his eyes.

That’s probably not something he should mention. “Hey,” Sylvain says. “Any issues?”

Felix shakes his head and sits down on one of the chairs. He starts taking his boots off and does a shitty job at pretending to not check out the cabin as he does so. “It’s nicer here than what I was expecting.”

“That’s, uh, good. I guess. Either way, when have I ever been the type to disappoint?” Sylvain smiles. “I haven’t started making your tea yet, but once I do, I can—”

“It’s fine,” Felix says, kicking his boots off with so much force that they fly across the room and smack into the wall. “I can make it myself. Just wash my boots.”

Sylvain’s smile grows in size. “How considerate of you.”

“Don’t look at me like that. I’ll unpack some of the stuff if you want me to.”

Felix is offering to do way more than Sylvain assumed he would, and it’s genuinely shocking. He’s not sure whether or not he’s supposed to laugh or kiss him on the head. “I mean, if you feel up to it then you can. But…”

An eyebrow raise. “But what?”

“You look pretty tired,” Sylvain admits, internally cringing at the fact that he just said that aloud. “No offense.”

Felix makes horrific eye contact. It’s horrific because he tends to avoid eye contact altogether. “I could say the same thing about you,” he says, standing up. “Go wash my shoes.”

 _No point in dawdling,_ Sylvain thinks. He makes a noise that sounds something like _okaysureyeah_ , then picks up the previously-flung-boots and heads back outside into the cold. 

It is bizarrely quiet outside. The past few years seem to have been riddled with noise, from screaming and crying to laughing and low mumbles. There was rarely a night where Sylvain went to sleep without being surrounded by sound—whether in a literal sense or simply due to the nonstop faint buzzing in his head. It was annoying, to be quite frank.

But now that it’s actually, truly quiet outside, he isn’t sure what to make of it. Saying that it’s _too quiet_ is close to hypocrisy territory, but that’s the only emotion he can seem to settle on. 

Well—fine, then. Sylvain is already a multifaceted hypocrite, so it doesn’t matter.

He makes his way to the edge of the dock. It’s one of those docks that aren’t really anchored into the ground; instead, it floats on top of the water thanks to its aluminum frame. Sylvain never really understood the appeal of these things. They’re less sturdy.

There isn’t any particularly easy way to do this other than getting down on his knees and dipping the boots directly into the water and scrubbing off the mud with his gloves, and so this is exactly what Sylvain does. The water is _freezing_ —he can feel it even with the protection of the gloves. It’d be fun to jump in and swim.

Not right now, of course, but in theory. If he can somehow convince Felix to swim in this pond, Sylvain will consider it his most impressive personal achievement. 

The funny part is that they’ve swam in cold lakes and ponds before. Sylvain remembers being little and playing around in the water with Felix and Dimitri and Ingrid. They were so… unsupervised, and so carefree. It was only them and the ice and the snow in those moments and that was all right, because they didn’t need anything else.

Sylvain frowns. 

He’s realizing that he doesn’t like this silence as much as his brain told itself he would. For one thing, he’s paranoid that something in the pond is going to explode and jump up out of the water, which he recognizes as an irrational thought but cannot stop mulling it over regardless. And, for another, this quiet is giving him way too much room to think.

Suddenly, Sylvain wants nothing more than to be back in the cabin. He pulls the boots out of the water and inspects them best he can with the limited visibility he’s been given. They look good enough. Good enough for Felix to not gripe.

With the slightest of sighs, Sylvain stands and heads back into the cabin. 

* * *

What he finds inside is nothing short of spectacular. Felix has taken the liberty of completely emptying out their bags and setting out clothes (and hanging up Syvlain’s gross socks in front of the fireplace!) and leftover food and whatever other supplies had been packed along. What’s more is that he’s changed into his nightwear and is holding a mug of tea, which is a sight rare enough for Sylvain to make an entire diary entry on it. 

Not that he has a diary. Byleth had once said, _Sylvain, you’d benefit from writing in a diary,_ and, as Sylvain sometimes tends to do, he completely ignored the advice.

“You look comfortable,” he says, lifting up the boots as he speaks to show that they’ve been washed. “Thanks for putting all the stuff away.”

“Yeah. Thanks for washing the boots.” Felix’s lips twitch like they want to smile but can’t.

It’s enough for Sylvain, though. He sticks the shoes directly in front of the fireplace upside-down so that they can (hopefully) dry off enough by tomorrow morning. “How’s the tea?”

“Fine,” Felix says. “I made you some.”

Sylvain blinks. “You made me tea?”

Now Felix blinks. “Do you think I don’t know how to make tea?”

“What? No! That’s not what I think. You just ended up doing more… work than I did.”

“No I didn’t.”

Sylvain plucks off his gloves and sits them in front of the fire as well before picking up the mug of tea left on one of the small kitchen counters. “You kind of did, though. All I did was light a bunch of matches and dip some boots in water. You unpacked all the bags, made tea, and—”

“I don’t need a walkthrough of things that I just did,” Felix snaps, crossing his legs on the bed. “And It doesn’t matter.”

Sylvain raises his hands, innocent. “Okay, whatever you say. Thanks anyway.”

Silence. They stare at one another.

“So—”

“Did you—”

Felix scratches the back of his head. “You first.”

“Okay.” Sylvain isn’t about to make things even more complicated by bowing down and saying _oh, no, you should speak first._ That’s something Dimitri would do. “Did you pick the side of the bed that you want?”

From the look on his face, it seems that Felix has bizarrely already forgotten about that. “I don’t care.” Pause. “I’ll take the side closer to the wall.”

That’s more like it. Sylvain grins, sly and catlike. “Great.”

“Why is it great.” Felix doesn’t pose this as a question, but rather a statement. He takes a menacing sip of his tea and suddenly, Sylvain wants to change into his nightclothes and not make eye contact for a good ten minutes.

“I don’t know. Great that you… uh, can make decisions for yourself?” He continues speaking, not wanting to hear whatever comment Felix is holding back. “Where’d you put all the clothes?”

“The chests.” Felix points at it with his head.

And, quite fashionably, Sylvain proceeds to makes a beeline for said chests.

* * *

The bed is comfortable, but Sylvain can’t sleep.

They have a nice setup going, he can’t deny that. The fires that were lit earlier have died down to soft glimmers, and because he’s laying on the side of the bed farther from the wall, its last remaining warmth hugs the side of Sylvain’s body. It is an immensely wonderful sensation.

They finished their tea quickly; the mugs have been left on the floor next to the bed, drained and unwashed. Felix was clearly very tired—at one point he was barely able to keep his eyes open (which was yet another rare sight that Sylvain had the honor of witnessing). He had sat there, holding his empty cup and staring at his lap, until Sylvain wordlessly took the mug from his hands and set it down. _Sleep,_ he had said, voice too fond. 

Felix did not object. He went to sleep.

Sleep seems like an easy inevitable thing after such a long day of traveling and Sylvain is glad that this holds true for Felix. And it isn’t as though Sylvain _isn’t_ tired—quite the contrary, in fact—but he cannot stop thinking about every conceivable event in history right now. 

Maybe it’s the fact that he can’t get Felix sleeping out of his mind. They separated their sides with a bunch of pillows (childish, but whatever), and just before Sylvain laid down, he took one last glance at Felix.

It’s weird, seeing him so… unguarded. It’s weird seeing his face relaxed for once; the facial muscles around his brow were softened and, combined with the glow of the fireplace, he looked to be the picture of serene. Sylvain has seen him sleep before, but even those times were so fucking reserved. The man never stops being a brick wall even for a second.

Except for now, apparently, after he has been completely and utterly tired out by a horseride. This cabin is more miraculous than Sylvain had originally thought.

If he wanted to, Sylvain could sit up and reach out to Felix—he could gently lay his hand on his cheek and smooth the skin near his temple with his thumb. He could run his hand through his hair. He could take Felix’s hand and trace his fingers over it, inspecting whatever scars and calluses are there from millenniums of weilding a sword.

He could do all those things.

Sylvain’s mind flashes a giant neon sign that reads _Danger! Danger! Do not have feelings!_ and he pathetically clings onto that neon sign because those feelings sure would not be a good thing to develop out here in the middle of nowhere. 

It’s unfortunate that he’s already begun to develop… emotions, which renders a large part of this argument completely meaningless.

“It’s fine,” Sylvain says aloud, not convincing himself at all. He keeps trying: “This is totally fine. No problems here. No problems…” 

No problems, and that’s final. 

Sylvain closes his eyes again and imagines the beam on the ceiling directly above him falling on top of his skull. It makes him feel much better.

* * *

He wakes up, and Felix is not there. In another universe, this would be terrible and tragic and sad, but in this universe, it isn’t. 

It isn’t terrible and tragic and sad in this universe because 1) Felix likes to sleep early and wake up early, 2) there is no reason for him to stay in bed and 3) they’re not dating, obviously. So it doesn’t matter.

Something about the situation makes Sylvain feel like it _should_ be terrible tragic sad heartbreaking et cetera, but he’s not going to think about that any more deeper than surface-level.

He sits up and rubs his eyeballs. It’s kind of a wonder, though, as to how Felix clambered out of bed so quietly and so stealthily. It’s not like he necessarily has a reason to do that regularly.

And _honestly,_ Felix could have at least stayed in the cabin until Sylvain woke up. But his boots are gone from their spot in front of the fireplace, and so is his overcoat, and his weapon probably isn’t here, either. Sylvain can’t imagine what the hell he’s gone out to do, and he also can’t imagine how long he’s _been_ out, too. Whatever it is, he’s got to have a good explanation for it, otherwise Sylvain is going to pretend to be mad for the rest of the day, and— 

—Suddenly, the door swings open. It swings open so hard that, if just one more Newton of force were applied, it would have flung off its hinges.

Felix stands there, snugly bundled up. He’s holding a lot of wood in his arms, and once he’s back inside the cabin and has (gently) shut the door with his foot, he deposits the wood on top of the table, wiping off excess dirt from his clothes afterwards.

“Uh, hi,” Sylvain says, feeling properly dumb, especially now that his brain has shook off most of its sleepiness. “Whatcha got there?”

“Firewood.” Felix yanks off his gloves. “I figured we’d run out eventually and wanted to get a head start on collecting supplies.”

“Oh, hey. That’s a good idea.” Sylvain smiles, and he does not miss Felix’s eyes going wide at the approval. In fact, he catalogues it in his mind for later. “Wait—you said supplies. As in plural.”

“I caught some fish. The pond has a lot. I caught some other stuff, too. I filled up a box outside with a lot of ice and stuck the food inside of it.” As he speaks, Felix slowly begins to take off some of his heavier equipment. Most of it drops to the floor before he pushes it under the table with his foot. “So yeah. _Supplies as in plural._ ”

Sylvain has been rendered speechless. What is happening? What the hell is happening? Felix is standing here, slowly undressing, telling him about all the fish and firewood he’s collected, and isn’t agitated by the fact that Sylvain had slept in?

 _The cabin,_ he thinks vaguely. _The rules are different in this cabin._

“Holy shit. Now I feel bad for laying in bed all morning.”

“It’s fine,” Felix says. He takes a seat on the end of the bed and begins removing his shoes. “You looked tired.”

That’s funny. Sylvain almost laughs. He doesn’t, though, because he notices that Felix’s eyelashes have crystallized a little bit—no doubt due to the weird rain and snow mixture going on outside—and it’s a lot to take in. “By the way,” he starts, deciding to comment on it, “your eyelashes are, uh. Icey.”

Felix shrugs. The nerve. “It’ll melt.”

“Yeah, maybe if there was a fire in the fireplace or something to make the cabin a couple degrees warmer.” Sylvain stands up, grimaces because he feels like an old man who has been bedbound for the past two years, and decides to pull out some firewood. “You said that you got fish, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to cook it?” Sylvain asks, taking out some of the previously stored wood from its cupboard and throwing the newer stuff back in its place.

“I want to wait a little bit. I need my eyes to defrost.” Felix tentatively touches his eyelashes. “After that, though.”

That’s fair. Eating fish with frost all over one’s eyelashes seems unenjoyable. Besides, this gives Sylvain some more time to stare at him. “Yes, sir.”

Felix gives no reply to that. In fact, he doesn’t even lift his head up; he continues removing his boots—he’s working at a ridiculously slow rate—while breathing at what must be an imperceptibly low frequency. 

Okay, fine. No response. 

Sylvain can deal with that some more.

* * *

On the first day, they spend most of the afternoon outside hunting and exploring whatever is closeby. Sylvain doesn’t find anything revolutionary, nor does Felix—mostly just dying grass and dying bushes and dead trees and wormy creatures. They collect the worms, though, because those are helpful for fishing and probably a couple of other things. Maybe. Sylvain is no worm expert.

What he _is_ an expert on, though, is repeatedly stating how quiet it is. It’s quiet everywhere! It’s quiet in the cabin, it’s quiet near the horses, it’s _still_ quiet on the dock. At least during the day there’s the sound of birds, which adds some degree of comfort. 

_No birds at night,_ he told himself. _Don’t stay out late at night._

While Felix was putting away some more fish, Sylvain had stood on the end of the dock and looked into the water, trying to figure out what could be down there. Fortunately there didn’t seem to be any kind of monster that would jump up and eat him, nor did it seem like there was even a single fish large enough in size to do that. Rest assured, Sylvain can now safely clean Felix’s boots at night in the pond if there is another need to do so. 

The disenchanting part of hunting all day is that time passes by very quickly. One moment Sylvain is putting on his shoes and heading out with a spear in tow and the next he is on his knees, tossing more fire into the fireplace, and Felix is lounging on the bed behind him, eating a meat skewer like it’s the first one he’s had in days. They talk about Garreg Mach, and they talk about the war, and they talk about memories upon memories upon memories. In this way, Sylvain thinks, they are like an old married couple.

Except—that isn’t the only reason they’re like an old married couple, because for the second night in a row, Felix makes tea for himself and Sylvain, and Felix is the one who actually cooks dinner, and Felix is the one who asks to borrow Sylvain’s socks because his are soggy and cold from hunting, and Felix is the one who gently touches Sylvain’s arm when he asks, _do you want anything else to eat?_

Sylvain thinks that he’s going to be sick. He cannot stop thinking about Felix’s eyelashes. He’s walking around dozens of landmines, one at a time. Landmine roulette.

And then, at night, Felix falls asleep first once again and Sylvain looks at him; he looks at the way his long hair curtains itself across the pillow and he looks at his softened facial features and Sylvain looks, looks, looks, looks until his head hurts and he has to lay down and have a mental conversation with the ceiling.

The ceiling tells him that it doesn’t care.

ACT I: JOURNEY  
— END —


	2. UNCERTAINTY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes: miklan is mentioned in this, briefly, during a dream sylvain has.
> 
> and also, thanks for your patience with this chapter release!

ACT II: UNCERTAINTY

“Each of them always gravitating toward the other. Yet still they do not touch.”   
Erin Morgenstern _ , The Night Circus _

The next morning, Sylvain wakes up first, which is always a feat.

Felix is weird about sleep. It’s not something that has always been an issue for him, but it certainly is now, even if he doesn’t want to admit to it. When he was younger, Felix probably slept the heaviest out of the four of them—out of Sylvain, Dimitri, Glenn, and then Felix himself, of course—and he was a sleeptalker, too. Dimitri was a sleepwalker. Glenn snored. They each had their own quirks.

Sylvain was not very good at sleeping back then, because he was always forcing himself to remain vigilant. To prepare for the worst. To expect the unexpected (which eventually became the expected). If he could, he would have slept with one eye open, but it hurt to try and do that. There was nothing for him to worry about when he was having sleepovers with his friends, he knew that, but even so, he couldn’t help and be afraid. 

Now, though, it seems that they’ve switched places. Sylvain sleeps easily, falls asleep faster and stays asleep longer. Felix sleeps less—he wakes up early as hell most days to go and grumble on the training grounds—though Sylvain isn’t sure if his sleep is restless because he’s afraid of anything. Felix went from being a fearful kid (not in the way that Sylvain was fearful) to a solid young adult, unmoving and unwavering. 

Sylvain wishes that the dark circles under Felix's eyes were less prominent, though. 

He sits up and rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. Light streams in from the window and onto the blankets; it shines down on the back of Felix’s head, who is sleeping on his stomach. Maybe Sylvain should look for something to use as a curtain so that less light blinds them in the morning. Or maybe the bed should be moved to some place away from the window. That would require a lot of other furniture moving, though, so— 

“Hey,” a voice says, and it sounds a lot like Felix's because it is. Sylvain looks down at him, and he’s still on his stomach, covering his eyes up with a hand because he’s probably becoming aware of how ridiculously bright the sun is.

“Morning there, sleepyhead,” Sylvain replies, nice and easy, totally casual. Completely. “I always know when you’re tired because it's when you sleep longer than me. Is there a special occasion?”

Felix says nothing for a short moment, and then takes the time to roll onto his back (in the direction opposite of Sylvain, he notes) and sigh. “No,” he mumbles, sitting up and scratching the back of his head. Sylvain’s eyes fall to his long hair and he looks away, because—right. Feelings are dangerous and all that.

“Get out of bed,” Felix then says, shoving Sylvain to the side a little bit while he clambers out of bed, limbs going all over the place. Sylvain tells himself not to be hurt, because there’s no reason for him to be hurt, because there’s no reason for Felix to continue to lay in bed! Simple as that.

Regardless, he’s not going to get out of bed. “Nah. I don’t feel like doing a lot today.”

“We should try and gather a few more supplies.” Felix bends down by the fireplace and starts shoveling the ashes into a little bucket. “There’s still a few more things that we could stand to have. More food, mostly.”

“You realize that we brought a pretty decent amount of food along, though, right?”   
  
“I know. But you can’t ever have too much.” Felix pushes the bucket off to the side and stands to get more firewood, probably. “After today you can sit around and do nothing for a while.”

Sylvain sighs. He knows that Felix is right, which is unfortunate, because he hates when Felix is right. “Fine, fine,” he concedes, waving a hand around. “I’m getting up.”

It takes him a moment to crawl out of bed, movement like a tired animal. His feet just are not up for a lot of action this morning, it seems. Maybe he needs a bit of incentive.

Today he can start prodding Felix’s brain to figure out exactly why he agreed to come along to this little  _ outing  _ so easily. Yes. That’s a good idea. They’ve certainly had time to settle in, and after today they’ll be set to stay settled for a couple of days—or at least until they start running out of food. 

The evening, Sylvain decides, is when he’ll bring up the topic. He’s got to bring it up delicately, though, so he figures that it might be best to not take the easy way out and wing it. Rarely is he this cautious around Felix; after years and years of friendship, there’s hardly a need to toe around him very much. 

The issue is that there’s no telling how willingly honest Felix is going to be. 

"Anything you want me to go look for in particular?” Sylvain asks as he makes the bed. Repeat:  _ as he makes the bed.  _ Sylvain never makes his bed.

Felix has been busying himself with the firewood. He lights a match and drops it into the fireplace, which is decked out _not_ _only_ with wood but also with a few crumpled sheets of paper to get things going. “Hm. Berries, maybe.”   
  
Sylvain makes a face like he’s just been told he’s going to be a father. “ _ Berries?” _

“I don’t know, I thought that you might want some,” Felix grumbles, voice showing frustration. “Don’t get so surprised at me for trying to be thoughtful.”

“I don’t necessarily want any berries, but it kind of sounds like _you_ might want some.” Pause. “I’ll go find some sour ones, how about that? I’ll taste them and everything. Just for you.”   
  
Felix grunts. “Whatever. Just don’t poison yourself.”

“No promises,” Sylvain says, winking inappropriately. He opens up his chest of clothes and pulls out some stuff suited for hunting, even though he’s not going to be doing much of that. They didn’t bring along much actual armor, because there’s no need for it, and it would also be ridiculously heavy if they had. 

“Sylvain.” Felix glares. “Don’t joke about that.”   
  
Sylvain raises his hands into the air. “Fine, fine. While you go hunt and be all fancy I will pick berries off of bushes very meticulously and gather them into a lacey basket.”

Felix makes another sound like a grunt, but it’s a little bit lighter this time, closer to the beginning of a laugh but not quite there. “Do that if you want,” he says, monotone. “Just make sure you put them in ice when you’re done.”

Oh, Felix. He certainly isn’t one to humor himself, is he? Some people might say it’s unfortunate, but Sylvain feels like it adds a certain amount of charm to his already bizarrely charming personality. Though, whether or not everyone else things he’s charming is something that Sylvain isn’t sure of. It might just be him. Maybe he should ask Dimitri, or maybe Ashe. That would be something: a letter to Ashe, asking  _ how are you? By the way, do you think Felix is charming? See you around! _

That might not go over the way he imagines it in his head.

Sylvain sighs. He has no way to send a letter right now anyway, so it’ll have to be a question for another time, if he remembers it. In the meantime, his goal is to find some berries, so he shuts the chest and starts changing.

* * *

It’s much colder today than it was yesterday.

Sylvain isn’t freezing, per se, because he’s built up quite the immunity to cold temperatures (thank you very much), but he can definitely sense somewhat of a difference. His hands feel uncomfortable; he opted to not wear any gloves today so that it’s easier to grab any berries that he finds.

And speaking of berries—he hasn't been having much luck in that department.

Felix is somewhere in the distance, staring down a rabbit with eyes like a vulture, and Sylvain is here, walking slowly around a cluster of bushes, trying very hard to locate even a single berry. Maybe there just aren’t any in this little cluster—maybe they’re in the other direction. Sylvain doesn’t know enough about botany, or gardening, or  _ whatever  _ to make any sort of informed decision on this.

“I’m looking somewhere else!” he shouts to Felix, who responds with a snappy hand wave, as if to shush him. Sylvain only shrugs. Clearly he’s focused, so he’s not going to bother him lest he wants half of his hair chopped off with that sword. 

Only Felix would hunt a rabbit with a sword. They brought a bow along with all of their supplies, and yet he uses the sword.

Well, whatever.  _ He can do what he wants,  _ Sylvain thinks to himself as he heads off in the other direction, pail in hand. The cabin didn’t have any lacey wooden baskets, so his fantasy dream of looking like a maiden who picks berries in a fairytale forest unfortunately doesn’t seem like it’ll come true. He's got to make due with this shitty pail.

He walks for a while, eventually coming across another clearing of trees and bushes. There are some mud puddles surrounding it, so Sylvain takes great precaution to walk around them and avoid getting his shoes all gross. They wouldn’t want a repeat of the mud fiasco from a few days ago; Felix’s boots still have dry mud stuck in between the laces.

Unfortunately, there are no berries here either. What’s the point of this again? Finding berries—for himself? No, it’s for Felix. He’s finding berries for Felix, sour ones, because he doesn’t like sweet things. 

In a way, this whole thing is just a metaphor for Felix’s personality: sour, but with the potential to be sweet, depending on the day, depending on the variation of events. Felix is never outwardly sweet, it’s something that he almost  _ cannot  _ physically do, but that’s fine. Everyone is different.

_ Just don’t poison yourself,  _ Sylvain thinks, remembering Felix’s line from a little while ago. That was a sweet thing to say. Sort of.

How else is he supposed to know which berries are sweet and which are sour if he doesn’t taste them, though? Felix is asking  _ too much  _ of him. The likelihood of being poisoned cannot really be that high, so he’s just going to ignore the advice and try any that he finds.

After a little bit more walking—back in the direction he originally came from—he finds another bundle of bushes. Even from a distance, he can see that there are some speckles of color on the otherwise mostly brown plants.  _ Berries!  _ he exclaims in his head, and then frowns at the excitement.

Sylvain drops the pail onto the ground next to one of the bushes and picks off a berry. There are two different kinds of bushes here, and two different kinds of berries. He picks one off a branch and tastes it—and finds it to be sour.  _ Good start.  _ And he doesn’t  _ feel  _ like he’s been poisoned, so he starts picking the berries off the bush and dropping them into the bucket.

There were a few books back in the cabin, he remembers. Maybe one of them can tell him whether or not these are safe to eat.

It takes him a while to pick them off all the branches, and a few get squished in between his fingers, but eventually he finishes and is able to move onto the next kind. He picks off the second type of berry, smells it, opens his mouth, and— 

“Sylvain!” comes a voice—a cry of a voice—off in the distance.  _ Felix. _

From the sound of his voice, Sylvain immediately assumes that the worst possible thing has happened. Felix injured himself while hunting, or worse yet, got bit by the rabbit, or maybe he— 

“Sylvain,” Felix says again, at normal volume. He slaps the berry out of Sylvain’s hand and sighs, making a facial expression that might only be described as  _ vicious. _

Sylvain’s eyes are bugging out of his head. “Wh—What? What happened?” 

“I told you not to poison your damn self,” Felix replies, grumbly. 

“I was just testing it—”   


“Shut up. Let me talk. I’m trying to tell you that these ones  _ are  _ poisonous.” Felix kicks the bush, for effect, and some of the berries fall onto the ground, disowned.

Sylvain finds himself speechless for a moment.

“Uh,” he manages. “How do you know?”

“Because—because I know.” Felix groans, as if agonized that he has to tell this story. “When I was little I almost ate the same kind until Glenn yelled at me. And then I cried a lot. That’s why I remember it so clearly.”

_ Ah.  _ That makes a lot of sense. Felix rarely, rarely talks about Glenn now, so for him to bring him up in a story means that he’s being really genuine right now.

Sylvain smiles, stupidly.

“Why the hell are you smiling? You’re supposed to be upset that I’m yelling at you.”

“Felix, if anything,  _ you  _ seem upset for yelling at  _ me. _ ”

“I—rrgh.” Felix rubs his forehead. “Whatever. I don’t have to confirm or deny that.”

“Of course you don’t.” Sylvain picks up the pail full of berries from the ground and shows them to Felix. “Hate to change the subject, but since you have berry expertise, I’m hoping you could tell me whether or not these are poisonous, considering I ate one.”

Felix shakes his head. “They’re not.” 

“Thank  _ goddess.  _ I was worried I had ruined our vacation.”

_ Our vacation.  _ Sylvain hadn’t meant to say that, but honestly, isn’t that what they’re doing? What else could it be called?

Felix makes a face at the words, but doesn’t say anything directly. “Wouldn’t want that,” he mumbles, digging his shoe into the ground. 

“Right. So, anyway—did you get the rabbit?”   
  
“Huh? Yeah. I got a few. I dropped them off back at the cabin.”

Another smile breaks out across Sylvain’s face. “Great. Are we done for the day?”

“I’m not done. The day’s barely halfway over.”

“Yeah, but  _ Felix.  _ We should be sitting around, napping, enjoying the cold weather—”   


“You can do that if you want, but  _ I’m telling you.  _ If we get all of this done in one day, you’ll have more time to sit on your ass and do nothing.”

Sylvain sighs. Felix is still right, he knows it. So unfair. “Fine, fine. But I’m not picking anymore berries. I’m gonna go look for other stuff.”

"Like what?"

“I don’t know, mushrooms,” Sylvain mumbles, heading off to the cabin so that he can drop off the berries and pick up the bow and a bundle of arrows.

“Just don’t poison yourself!” Felix calls out after him, frustration once again evident in his voice.

Sylvain holds out a thumbs up and says nothing more.

* * *

Things are mostly the same as they have been at nighttime so far. They both change into their night clothes, light a couple candles—how  _ romantic,  _ isn’t it?—and then make tea and sit in bed for a while, alternating between staring at the blankets and talking to one another.

While they do another round of staring, Sylvain realizes, very dejectedly, that he hasn’t asked Felix about why he decided to come along.

Is now really the right time? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, but he also doesn’t care, because if the conversation goes wryly they will still fall asleep next to one another, and in the morning they will act like nothing has happened and life will continue, for the most part, like it always does. And Sylvain finds this to be very comforting. 

“So Felix,” he starts, deciding to try his luck out. “I was wondering something.”   


Felix has his nose in his mug of tea, so he makes a questioning sort of noise and quickly glances up. It sounds something like,  _ hmrrhm? _

“I was wondering what inspired you to come along on this little trip with me.”   
  
The mug of tea is lowered. “What do you mean?”

Sylvain has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Either Felix is fucking with him and knows exactly what he means, or he genuinely has no idea and needs an explanation. No matter which it is, it is equal parts charming as well as annoying.

“I mean—why did you agree to come along with me to this? It doesn’t really seem like your thing, y’know. Vacationing in a somewhat abandoned cabin with  _ me _ of all people? You could have said no. But you didn’t. And I want to know why.”

That was a lot of words at once. Sylvain looks to Felix, who is worrying his lip, chewing on his answer. 

“Obviously you, uh, don’t have to answer if you don’t want! I was just curious, because—“

“Who else would I go with?”

Sylvain blinks. “What?”

“I asked who else I would go with. You say it like it’s shocking that I came along with you, but I don’t think so. What other person would I agree to do this with? Ingrid? She’d annoy me too much after three days. Dimitri? That wouldn’t work for a variety of reasons. M—“

“What about Annette?”

“She wouldn’t want to do this in the first place.”

Sylvain considers the statement. It’s true. “Okay, but still. This doesn’t seem like something you’d want to do.”

“You have no idea what I want and don’t want to do,” Felix mumbles, almost inaudible. Clearly it’s something that isn’t meant to be responded to. “Why do you need an explanation for this anyway? Is it not enough that I’ve come along?”

“No! That’s not what I was saying. I was just interested in—”

“I wanted to spend time with you, all right?” Felix interrupts, face twisting with annoyance. “Is it really that hard of a thing to work out? After five years of war, don’t you think it’s normal for me to want to do that?”

Felix’s eye visibly twitches. Sylvain is speechless for the second time today.

“I—” he starts once he’s regained his voice, “I guess… that’s pretty normal, yeah. Didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Felix takes a sip of his tea and sighs. “Stop assuming things about how I think.”

“You got it.” Sylvain sets his mug (which has long been emptied) down on the floor beside him and starts burying himself underneath the blankets. “I’m going to pretend to sleep now. But I’ll really be thinking about our conversation. Just thought that you should know.”

“Do whatever you want,” Felix mumbles, shifting to face the window. “But if you snore, I’ll hit you with a pillow.”   


“Duly noted. I will tell myself, while asleep, not to snore.”

There’s some noises, and then, all of the sudden, Sylvain is walloped with a pillow. He yelps. It doesn’t hurt—it’s a pillow—but it definitely surprises him. “All right! I get it! I’ll lose the attitude too!”

There is silence, then, and for a moment, Sylvain worries that he has already royally fucked this up. But after a couple of seconds pass, Felix half-erupts into laughter, which is an absolute  _ rarity.  _ Rare enough for Sylvain to sit up and turn and stare at him in all of his brief laughing glory.

“Holy shit,” he says. “I should let you smack me around with a pillow more often.”

Felix makes a  _ rrrghghrgh  _ sound and doesn’t reply otherwise. He sips loudly on his tea and Sylvain takes this as his cue to go to sleep, figuring that this is a good place to stop at. A nice, mostly positive note to end on.

“Goodnight,” Felix says after a few minutes, and for some reason, it makes Sylvain want to cry.

“Goodnight,” he says back. “Sleep well."

Sylvain thinks about Felix’s laugh as he falls asleep.

* * *

_ Today is a lounge day,  _ Sylvain thinks the moment he wakes up.  _ Finally. _

Once again, he wakes up first, which is another rarity in the series of rarities that have been going on the past couple of days. He looks over to a sleeping Felix, who is tightly grasping one of the pillows that they’ve been using to separate their sides of the bed.

Sylvain wonders whether or not they really have a need for that. They’ve had countless sleepovers with one another, all without a fucking  _ pillow boundary,  _ so what’s the need? Is it because they’re sharing a full sized bed as opposed to a king or a queen? Is it because it’s just the two of them?

The answer is unknown.

But, well. If today is a lounge day, then Sylvain will certainly lounge. He lays back down, giving one last glance at Felix, and shuts his eyes again.

* * *

When Sylvain wakes up the second time around, he is immediately aware of the fact that there is a presence beside him, and he finds immense comfort in this. Because Felix could have gotten up and sat on the floor or wherever, or he could have gone outside to train himself to death like he tends to do, but he  _ didn’t.  _ He’s still here.

Sylvain opens his eyes and sits up.

“You’re up late,” Felix says, and he’s holding a book as he says this.  _ Reading.  _ Augh. A domestic dream!

“Yeah I am,” Sylvain replies, stretching out his limbs, feeling like a big old pile of sand. “And it feels great.”

“It’s already the afternoon.”

Sylvain waggles a finger at Felix. “I’ll have you know that I woke up first a little while ago, but you were still sleeping. So  _ technically  _ I was up first.”

“Whatever.” Felix makes a frowny face and goes back to reading his book. Or—he goes back to pretending that he’s reading his book, from the looks of it. He keeps glancing off to the side.

Sylvain takes this typical vague avoidance behavior as his chance to get up and find something to eat. He throws the blanket off of himself in quite the dramatic fashion and gets out of bed, sluggish. “Want anything to eat?”

Felix does not look away from his book. “I’m fine,” he mumbles. “I had something earlier.”

“Eating without me? I’m hurt.” Sylvain rifles through their container of food that doesn’t need to be cooled and pulls out a container of oats. He sets it down on the table and steps outside, opens up their wooden-box cooler equivalent, and takes out a container of milk. 

He then procures a bowl from one of the cabinets and gets to work.

“What’re you reading?” he asks, dumping some of the oats into a bowl.

For a moment, Felix doesn’t answer, and Sylvain wonders if something is wrong. Even when Felix gives the title of the book, he still wonders if something is wrong, but keeps it to himself. Just for now.

“Never heard of it,” he says, setting the oats and milk into a second bowl and into the stone oven. “What’s it about?”

More silence. This time it’s prolonged, until finally: “Nothing interesting.”

This, of course, means that Felix thinks it’s interesting, but he’s too embarrassed to share what it’s about. Sylvain can work with this. “Why read it, then?”

“It’s—ugh. It’s one of those knight books, all right?”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “It is? Don’t you hate that sort of thing?”

“Yeah, a little bit.” Felix sighs. “Ashe recommended it to me. It’s not that bad, compared to some of the other stuff he’s tried to get me to read.”

“Not that bad how?”

“It’s less chivalry shit. More fight scenes.”

“And the romance?” Sylvain asks, leaning against the wall.

“The what?"

“You know what the word  _ romance _ means. Is there a lot of it in the book? You said there’s fight scenes, so I would imagine that’s because—”

“Okay, yes, I get it. The romance is minimal.”

Sylvain looks over at Felix and meets his eyes. They both lick their lips at the same time, and then they both look away from one another at the same time, and Sylvain wonders if he’s going to have to climb into a coffin and sleep there by the end of the week. 

One would hope not.

“How far in are you?” Sylvain asks, steering stability back into the conversation.

“Two-thirds finished.” 

Sylvain reaches into the stove (with mitted hands, of course) and pulls out his bowls. “Well, let me know what you think of the ending, I guess.”

“I’m never going to get to the ending if you keep talking to me,” Felix retorts, though his voice shows no malice, which is a good sign. 

“All right, all right, I get it. I’m shutting up now,” Sylvain says as he removes the smaller bowl from the larger one and sets it down on the table to cool off. “I’ll be here if you need anything,” he adds, sitting down. He’s not exactly sure  _ what  _ Felix might possibly need him for, but it’s nice to extend the invitation regardless, he supposes.

Once again, they lapse into silence. 

* * *

The silence and conversation take shifts for the rest of the day, alternating between quietness and discussion in no real pattern. Felix lays in bed majority of the afternoon and evening and he even finishes his book; he gets up and picks out another one to read from his bag and sets the completed one aside. It is perhaps the first day in years and years and years that Sylvain has seen him do  _ nothing.  _ No training. No exercise. Nothing at all besides reading and grumbling and eating. 

It is a nice change.

Sylvain can’t boss Felix around and tell him how to behave, but he does worry for him. He gets the feeling that the vigorousness and frequency of Felix's  training has something to do with him trying to  _ not think  _ about some of the bigger issues in life that make him…  _ sad.  _ It appears to be an endless cycle of tiring himself out so much that he doesn’t have the mental energy to think about things that are actually, truly bothering him.

So on a day like this, Sylvain cannot help but wonder what he’s thinking about. Are the books distracting enough? Is he only pretending to be distracted? Do their conversations help? Sylvain doesn’t know. And Felix is certainly not one to open up about this sort of thing, so he might not ever know.

He has to live with that.

Either way, it’s nice to see him sitting around for once in his life. Sylvain is surprised that he didn’t get up and go outside for a while.

“How’s the second book coming along?” Sylvain asks once he’s cleaned all the dishes they used for dinner.

“Fine,” Felix says, unhelpful. Sylvain climbs into bed next to him and stretches out his arms.

“Just fine?”

“Yeah, just fine. Are you going to read the one that I finished?”

Sylvain blinks. “I mean—I guess so, yeah. I might as well. I don’t have anything else to do.”

“Good.” Pause. Felix bookmarks the page he’s on and drops the book into his lap. “I want to know what you think of it.”

“Yeah, and Ashe is going to want to know too.”

“I’m sure that he will. But I’m not concerned with Ashe’s opinion right now, I’m concerned with yours.”

Speechless. Sylvain is rendered speechless again, just for a moment. “Oh? Uh, okay, then.” His limbs move on their own and he finds himself getting out of bed and moving towards Felix’s bag. He digs around in it for a while until he pulls out the book from earlier; he holds it in his hands like it is a prize of sorts and then sits back down on the bed. 

The tension between them is unbearable.

But! There isn’t really anything that Sylvain can do about it, so he opens up the book and stares at the table of contents. There are… a lot of chapters in this thing. Truthfully, Sylvain can’t remember the last time he read a book—he was in his young teens, probably. Books read for classes don’t count, and he only ever skimmed them, truthfully. 

“How did you read so fast?” he asks, feeling mildly dumb. 

“I didn’t do anything else all day,” Felix says, picking his book back up. 

_ Oh, right.  _ Sylvain had forgotten about that detail. “This thing seems plot-heavy.”

“I guess you’ll see.”

“Yeah.” Pause. “I guess I will.”

And with that in mind, he turns a few pages to the first chapter and starts to read. 

* * *

Sometime later on, Sylvain falls asleep. He falls asleep while reading, and so the book slides off the bed and thunks onto the floor. It doesn’t wake him up. 

Unfortunately, he has a dream, and this does wake him up. 

He is in the cabin in this dream, but the cabin is much larger in size. It’s so big, in fact, that the ceiling rises at least thirty feet about his head, and the walls are so far away that he can barely see the windows. It’s as though it stretches out past the horizon. 

Sylvain is alone in this cabin. Uncomfortable. The floorboards creak loudly with each step he takes in the direction that he hopes is the door. 

Something is following him from behind. 

He’s not going to turn around and look, though, because he doesn’t want to see who it is; it could be just about anybody. It could be Dimitri, eyepatch stripped off and blood dripping from the socket and down his chin, face contorted painfully. It could be Ingrid, tangled up in string and inching her way towards him, tears in her eyes. It could be Miklan, arms and legs and neck stretched out by four feet, fingers crumbling into grey stone. Or it could even be Felix, arrows stuck out of every inch of his body, feet melting into the ground, wailing. 

It could be anybody. It could be anything. It could be all four of them. Sylvain has the image of all four of those in his head, so it’s entirely likely that this is true. 

He starts running, eventually, and the floorboards creak louder and louder until it’s the only thing he can hear, legs carrying him as fast as he can to the door. The door—he can see it in the distance, like heaven’s gate waiting there for him. 

Sylvain grabs the knob and twists it, opening the door up as fast as his muscles allow him. But behind the door— 

—is nothing but stone wall.

For a moment, he forgets about the looming danger behind him, focusing all of his attention on the door and his confusion behind it.

He remembers the danger when a long, stretched out hand touches his shoulder.

Sylvain does not hear himself scream.

* * *

He wakes up with a start, arms flying all over the place as if they were spasming. He presses a hand against his chest, making sure that his heart hasn’t ruptured into a million pieces.

“Seiros,” Sylvain whispers to nobody, “why do you continue to fuck with me?”

Silence. He gives himself a moment to get his blood pressure back to normal, and then lays down, staring at the ceiling. It’s been a pretty long while that he’s had a bad dream, and most of them he ends up forgetting anyway. But every now and then there comes an exception, one that he  _ does  _ remember, and the fact that he’s had it while next to Felix is quite an inconvenience because— 

“Are you okay?” comes a voice.

—because of that. 

Sylvain doesn’t move. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just had a funky dream.”

Felix is quiet for a few seconds. “Don’t lie to me,” he then says, sitting up. 

“I’m—I’m not lying, okay? It was funky because it was bad. I’m really not required to tell you about it.”

That was unnecessarily harsh and he knows it. But Felix doesn’t respond, which is nice of him, so Sylvain sits up too and sighs. He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Sorry. I know you’re just worried.” (What a thing to say!) “But I’ll get over it.”

“If you’re sure. I wish you’d just let me—be concerned. Ugh. I know that I usually don’t act concerned but I—”

“It’s okay,” Sylvain says, smiling inappropriately. “I appreciate it. I shouldn’t have gotten mad.”

“I don’t particularly want to go back and forth about this for the rest of the night,” Felix mumbles. He climbs out of bed and walks over to the little kitchenette area, rummaging around for a moment before he returns with a glass of water. “Have this,” he instructs.

Sylvain is a good listener, so he takes the water and drinks some, feeling very much like a little kid again, taken care of by Glenn. It’s almost the same thing now, he realizes, but Felix has taken over the role.

Funny stuff.

“Thanks,” he says, setting the glass down on the floor beside him. “So doting.”

Felix grumbles and gets back into bed. He props himself up on the pillow divider in the center of the bed, looking up with those beautiful eyelashes of his, and Sylvain feels like he surely might die. Surely. His hand is twitching, wanting nothing more than to touch Felix’s hair. It cascades over his shoulder, falls down in layers like a velvet curtain. 

_Surely_ Sylvain might die. 

“You have nice hair,” he says, stupidly. The words were an accident, in all honesty. 

Felix makes a spluttering sound and rolls over so that he’s facing the window now. Sylvain sighs and doesn’t press the issue, because it’s his own damn fault for saying words in the first place. 

Silence lingers. Sylvain can’t close his eyes, so he finishes his water, gets some more, and then lays back down. Once he again he is back to having a mental conversation with the ceiling, and once again the ceiling doesn’t respond. 

“I think that you have nice eyes,” Felix says, voice puncturing the darkness like a pin in a balloon. 

“You do?” 

“Yeah. Now let me sleep.”

“But  _ Felix,  _ I  _can’t_ sleep,” Sylvain whines, mostly joking. He’s got Felix in a good spot—a deeply honest one. Not that Felix isn’t usually honest, but he’s being particularly  _ open  _ right now and he doesn’t want the moment to go to waste. 

He needs to get a judgment on Felix’s emotions. 

“Well.” Felix sits up  _ again _ . “I can’t—help you. What do you want me to do, exactly?”

Such a tricky question, because Sylvain could say almost  _ anything  _ in response. Anything. He could make a joke and go to bed normally, he could say he’s kidding, or he could actually ask for something. 

He may as well try. There’s only a little bit of harm in trying. “Hold me,” he says in a voice that could be interpreted as both serious as well as humorous. 

Felix opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and then closes it one more time. “Um.” Long pause. It might be the longest pause in the history of the universe, actually. “What?”

Sylvain knows that he’s really gotten to Felix when he’s rendered speechless. Sometimes when Sylvain says something particularly bold or daunting, Felix immediately launches into frustration and mumbling and lots of fluttering eye contact. Other times, though, when it’s  _ super  _ bold, he has nothing to say at all. This is most definitely one of those times. “You heard me.”

Another long pause. It might be longer than the previous pause.

“I… okay,” Felix finally says.

And this time around, Sylvain is the one to be speechless. He stares, eyes completely still in their sockets, until his hands start moving on their own. They pick up the pillows that separate the two sides of the bed and toss them onto the floor. 

Then he curls up into the blankets and opens his arms. “Come here.”

Felix looks down at him and makes a face that appears as though he’s debating whether or not he actually wants to follow through with this, but after a moment, his face softens and he lays down, resting his head on Sylvain’s chest and curling his hands into his shirt. He sighs, gentle.

A totally normal thing for friends to do. 

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one holding you?” Felix asks, voice much louder than it was before because of their close proximity. 

“Well. Technicalities. They’re unimportant in the long run, wouldn’t you say?” Sylvain smiles—mostly at himself—and wraps his arms around Felix, completely content with this situation. 

“I guess so,” Felix whispers, shifting slightly.

And then—they slip into silence again. It’s a comfortable silence, though, and Sylvain is happy about it. He closes his eyes. He feels Felix above him. He listens to him breathing. He keeps smiling at himself.

Sylvain falls asleep. He forgets the rest of his dreams.

* * *

The next morning is less awkward than Sylvain thought it would be.

They wake up in _sort of_ the same positions. Sylvain wakes up first, though—this seems to be a pattern—and he gets to have a good look at Felix, slumped on top of him, hair draped all over the place, hands curled up into fists like a grumpy child. 

Suddenly, Felix opens up both of his eyes. They make intense eye contact.

Felix shoots upright. “Uh,” he starts, “good morning.”

Sylvain smiles, completely casual, and sticks his hands behind his head. “Morning. Did you sleep well?”

“You could say that,” he mumbles, scratching his head. “What about you?”

“Pretty good, I’ve got to say. You’re very comfortable.”

Sylvain cannot believe this. He’s saying all these things, and Felix is saying all these things back, and yet it doesn’t feel like they’re on the verge of arguing with one another yet. In fact, it feels like the complete opposite of that—Sylvain feels completely calm, and Felix  _ looks  _ completely calm. 

This is good. _This is good_ , he thinks. It still isn’t enough for him to be able to gauge any emotions, but a wonderful start to getting Felix to open up more nonetheless. It’s going to have to be a gradual sort of thing, of course; they’ve been friends for years and Sylvain cannot remember a time that Felix was emotionally vulnerable towards him. 

But there is always time for change.

"Yeah, whatever,” is the response Sylvain gets, and he couldn’t be more pleased with it. 

* * *

A few days pass.

After their little sleep-together, things still go back to the same as they were before. The only difference is that they’ve taken down the pillow barrier on the bed, which has often resulted in them waking up with their limbs all tangled together. It’s—an interesting thing they’ve got going on for sure. 

Fortunately, they haven’t been tiptoeing around one another almost at all, which is good. Sylvain was worried about that, especially because of Felix’s proclivity to be… awkward and bad at communicating. But for the most part everything is fine. Life is normal.

Life is normal.

Life is so normal, in fact, that Sylvain has decided they’re going to do something that they did as kids: swim in a cold lake. A cold pond, to be specific; it’s the one outside, in front of the cabin. 

And by another miracle of life, it doesn’t take any convincing at all to get Felix to agree to go for a swim. He’s very compliant on this trip—Sylvain finds it to be sort of incredible. He’s never been so willing to do random, Sylvain-esque things in his entire life, and something about it is extremely satisfying.

“Going in first?” Sylvain asks once they’re both out standing on the little floating dock. “Or do you want me to?”

Felix bends down and touches the water with his hand. “I guess I’ll go in first.”

He stands up and stretches to ready himself, and Sylvain truly cannot stop staring at him. They’ve both stripped down into nothing but their underclothes, forgoing any sort of shirt because—why not? 

Anyway, Sylvain can’t stop staring and it’s becoming a problem. He’s hyperaware of everything that goes on between them; every extra glance that Felix gives does not go by unnoticed, nor does the duration of his stares. They’ve been getting longer. 

Sylvain is antsy.

“Go ahead in, then,” he says, grimacing at himself just because he feels like it’s appropriate. 

Felix stares at the pond. Neither of them know how deep it is, so it’s nice of him to take one for the team and jump in first. He takes a deep, deep clarifying breath and jumps in feet first, because it would be extremely careless to dive in and Felix isn’t at that level of negligence. 

He pops his head out of the water after a short moment, and Sylvain notices that he’s already shivering. “Fuck, it’s cold,” he says, gripping his shoulders with his hands. “Get in here.”

Sylvain nods. “Yes, sir.” And then he jumps straight in, also not diving, because Felix would yell at him if he did. 

Felix was right. It is very cold.

Luckily, Sylvain’s resistance to cold temperatures is just a little bit better than Felix’s, so what he’s experiencing probably isn’t that bad compared to what Felix is experiencing. He keeps this in mind as he comes up to the surface, taking a heavy breath of air out of shock. 

He pushes the hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, it’s pretty cold.”

Felix shoots lasers out of his eyes when he looks at Sylvain. “I don’t know how the h-hell I did this when I was l-little,” he stutters, mouth shivering along with the rest of his body. For a moment, Sylvain fantasizes kissing him to warm him up, but also, that would require a lot of skin-on-skin contact and he thinks he would die if that happened.

So he just laughs instead. 

“I guess resistance to cold goes away after a while. And we swam in the cold lakes a  _ lot  _ up North. I’m assuming you haven’t done that in a few years.”

“Yeah, but still. Why don’t  _ you  _ look as cold as me?”

“Dunno.” Sylvain shrugs. “I’m just good at everything.”

“If I wasn’t five feet away from you I would have smacked you on the arm.”

Sylvain laughs again and swims a little closer. His feet can just barely touch the ground, but he can already tell that there are a lot of creatures down there so he doesn’t want to do that for very long anyway. “Go ahead, smack me.”

Felix reaches out and smacks him without even the barest hint of seriousness.

“Is that better?”

“Hmph.” Pause. “Yes.”

“Glad to hear. Now can we wrestle?” So much for avoiding skin-on-skin contact. Wrestling is a lot different from kissing, though, so Sylvain thinks that he’ll manage.

Especially because Felix almost cracks a smile at the question. His lip twitches upwards—just barely—but it’s enough for Sylvain to notice it. 

And Felix doesn’t provide an answer beyond the lip twitch, because in a flash, he pounces at Sylvain, submerging him underwater in a flurry of kicks and poorly aimed punches.

It’s like they’re kids again, Sylvain thinks. It’s like they’re kids again, but this time Felix probably isn’t going to cry if (when) he loses. And this time, Glenn isn’t here to pat him on the head and comfort him and coax him into stopping crying. And this time, they’re probably not going to eat cookies afterwards and fall asleep on the same couch.

Though they might get somewhere close to doing that. 

They fight for a while. They fight for so long, in fact, that once they’re done, Sylvain’s fingers have become significantly pruny, which is something he hasn’t experienced in a while. It feels good to do this—it feels good to be a kid again, if only briefly. And it’s being a kid in a good way, not in a scary way. It’s freeing. It’s just him and Felix and the fish in the pond and nothing else. Sylvain doesn’t want it to be anything else, either.

He stares at Felix’s long hair.

He stares at the scars on his body.

He stares at his shoulder blades.

Sylvain feels like he has fucked himself over.

But—no matter. He’s going to make it through the rest of their time here no matter what, even if he has to repress himself half to death, because he doesn’t want to lose his friendship with Felix. They’ve kept it going for so long—so many arguments, so much back-and-forth—and he doesn’t want it to end because of some silly  _ feelings  _ and  _ emotions.  _

He’s not going to ruin this for himself. He refuses.

The two of them have climbed out of the water and back onto the dock. Felix picks up their towels and hands one over to Sylvain, which he immediately wraps around himself. The wind is hurting his skin; his arms and legs and chest are completely red from how cold the water was, and the tips of his fingers feel like they’re starting to atrophy, but it’s fine. Soon they’ll be sitting in front of the fire and everything will feel better. 

The two of them dry off enough to go back to the cabin, and so they hobble back inside, stepping on a plethora of sticks and rocks and light snow on their way. By the time they’re inside, Sylvain feels like his entire body has been resting on hot coals for a few hours. It burns a little.

Felix is already throwing a sweater on. It’s a huge grey one—a turtleneck that hikes way up his neck—and it looks comfortable as hell.

They still have to do a little bit of changing. They strip out of their wet clothes; Felix steps into their little bathroom to do so and reappears a short moment later, sporting also-grey sweatpants. He yawns as he shuts the door and Sylvain feels like he’s going to explode into a million pieces.

After a couple moments of essentially doing essentially nothing at all, Sylvain starts setting up the fire in the fireplace again. His wet hair keeps flopping in front of his eyes, and for a moment, he entertains the idea of taking a bath just to warm up. He decides against it, though, because it would probably make his skin hurt.

“Want anything to eat or drink?” he asks, lighting a match.

“Hmm.” Felix steps closer from behind. “I want soup.”

“ _ Soup _ ? How are we—”

“I brought along chicken stock,” he says, and Sylvain can hear him opening up a cabinet and taking something out. “I brought a lot of food items. You’re just not observant and haven’t looked at anything.”

“That is completely untrue.”

“Then why do you keep making the same three things for yourself?”

Sylvain throws his hands up into the air in fake exasperation. “Because it’s easy! I’m a lazy guy! I like to lay down and—and stare at the wall!”

“That’s a stupid explanation. Just say that I’m right.”

“But it’s true. I’m lazy.” Sylvain leans back on his heels and throws a second match into the fireplace. “You know that it’s true.”

When he turns around, Felix is much closer than he originally thought he was, and he’s biting on his lip so hard that it looks like it might fall off. It makes Sylvain laugh extra hard. “All right, fine. You’re also right. Happy?”

“Happy,” Felix confirms, lip curling upwards. One of these days he’s going to get a genuine smile out of him and it’ll last longer than one and a half seconds, and then Sylvain will have accomplished all of his life goals.

This is an exaggeration, obviously, but it would be a great feat nonetheless. “Go make some soup if you want.”

“Will you have some?”

Sylvain stands, pushing himself up by smacking his hands onto his knees and stretching. “Of course I’ll have some.”

* * *

Felix makes soup. 

It tastes good. It tastes—not as good as Dedue or Ashe’s cooking, admittedly, but that sort of thing is a given. Sylvain had no idea that Felix knew  _ how  _ to cook; he’s never expressed any sort of interest in it when he was back at the academy as well as in the years before and after that. 

They lie on the bed in silence once they’ve eaten and cleaned everything up, two pairs of eyes fixated on the ceiling, bodies motionless. Sylvain thinks about some things. He thinks about how close Felix is right now—so close, in fact, that their arms rest on top of one another. He wonders if this is something that Felix would do with anyone else. He’s not a particular fan of  _ touching  _ in nearly any capacity and Sylvain is the very opposite, so he always appreciates moments like these.

He’s also thinking about Felix’s hair and how long and beautiful it is. He’s thinking about how badly he wants to touch it, how badly he wants to run his fingers through it and undo it from its ponytail and how badly he wants to kiss— 

Okay. 

Sylvain stops thinking. He sits up and rubs his eyes. 

Felix sits up, too, which isn’t helping anything. He also rubs his eyes. “I fell asleep,” he says.

Sylvain stares at his hair. “You did?”

“I think so. I feel like I did. My head is… full of salt.”

“Full of salt?”

“Or—lint. Something stuffy.” 

“Need a kiss to make it better?” Sylvain says, and he immediately decides to punch himself in the face later on tonight.

Felix, as per usual, says nothing for a moment. Then he exhales sharply; it’s something close to a laugh. “Sure, Sylvain. I don’t care.”

Sylvain has known Felix long enough to know that this is a resounding  _ yes!  _ so he leans in and presses a kiss to his temple. All of his dreams are coming true, it seems, mere moments after he thinks about them! Or at least—something close to those dreams. 

When he pulls away, though, the room is much quieter than it was before. 

The change is staggering. The difference is more than obvious. All at once Sylvain has been put inside of a play, and there is soft orchestral music playing in the background, and a spotlight has been put on the two of them and little fake glitter specks are falling from the sky. Sylvain is the lead role. Felix is the love interest.

They are reaching the peak of their rising action.

“Can I take your hair out of its ponytail?” Sylvain whispers.

When Felix responds, his voice is soft. It is so soft, softer than what it usually is. “Okay.”

And so Sylvain takes his hair out of the ponytail. He is in a fantasy world right now, he must be, because Felix doesn’t let  _ anyone  _ touch his hair. 

He pulls out the hairtie and sticks it around his wrist, and then smooths out the hair it was holding by running his fingers through it. “You ever going to cut this?”

“Maybe one day,” Felix says, crossing his arms. 

“Well, if you do, you better let me know beforehand.” He grins. “I’d like to see it.”

“Whatever. You can see it, I guess. If that’s something you _actually_ want to do.”

“Felix. There are a lot of things that I want to do. I’m sure there are a lot of things that you want to do. And though cutting hair might not seem very interesting, I would be  _ fascinated  _ to see you with short hair.” Sylvain smiles again. His hands are still in Felix’s hair. 

Still.

Felix shuffles his body to the side so that they’re facing one another. “What are some of the other things you want to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Pause. His face is bordering on a grimace; can he really just say that he wants to kiss Felix? On the mouth? Right now? “There’s plenty.”

“Give me an example, then.”

“All right, fine. I’ve always wanted to—” he winces and mentally chickens out, “—I’ve always wanted to have a pet dog.”

Felix makes a shocked sound with his mouth so preposterous that it is difficult to linguistically describe it. “A dog? That’s it?”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s it?’ Of course I want a dog! But they’re a lot of work, and I can’t really take care of myself,  _ sooo… _ it wouldn’t be fair.”

For just a moment, Felix’s eyes well up with concern in such a deep way that it’s almost startling. Sylvain wonders if he’s going to cry, but then remembers that he hasn’t seen Felix cry in at least six years.

It must hurt, Sylvain thinks. For Felix to keep his emotions in like that.

“Why not start off with a cat?” Felix says, leaning forward. “They’re more independent.”

“You’re just saying that because  _ you  _ want to own a cat.” 

Felix crosses his arms across his chest. “I—you don’t know that.” 

“Yeah I do. I’ve seen the way you interact with the monastery cats, y’know. You talk to them. It’s really cute.” A wink. “I haven’t told anyone, though, so don’t worry.”

“Thanks,” Felix says through gritted teeth. “How nice of you.”

“I know.” Sylvain licks his lips. He’s pretty proud of himself for holding up a considerably normal conversation. But it’s getting harder, because Felix is so, so close to him—close enough to touch his cheek. Close enough to hold him. 

But he’s not going to ruin their friendship, so he will keep waiting for more signs. Sylvain would wait until the end of the world for Felix. He is the only person that he would do that for.

The only one.

“Now you have to tell me something that you want to do,” he says, tilting his head to the side as if to show curiosity. 

“You already got one out of me. I want a cat.”

Sylvain waves his hand around. “Nah, that doesn’t count because you didn’t really say it out of your own volition. Tell me another one.”

Instead of arguing back, Felix only sighs, putting a finger on his chin while he thinks. It’s very endearing, and he probably isn’t realizing that he’s doing it. “I’ve always wanted to climb to the top of the cathedral.”

This time it is Sylvain’s turn to splutter. “You want to—what?  _ Why? _ ”

“I think the view would be nice,” Felix mumbles, breaking their eye contact and staring down at the blankets. It’s absolutely adorable. There’s a soft pink blush that spreads across his cheeks and even up past his eyes. It’s so sweet, so— 

Sylvain thinks that he is definitely going to die. 

“Okay, okay, that’s fair, don’t get all embarrassed. I’ll admit that the view would be good. What’s stopping you from climbing up there?”

“The threat of death, I guess.” Pause. “By gravity and by Rhea. I would rather avoid both of them. But it’s fine enough to just think about it.” He sighs, quiet. “I think that most of the things I want to do are more hypothetical than anything else.”

“Hypothetical?”

“Yeah. I want to show Glenn this one cat at the monastery who is always carrying around a stick in its mouth. But I can’t do that. Hypothetical.”

Sylvain tries very hard to act like this statement hasn’t fazed him. He rubs his sternum to see if it’ll make the ache in his chest go away. “I think it’s fine to want hypothetical things.”

“Oh yeah?” Felix straightens his back. “Do you have a hypothetical want?”

“Of course I do. I have multiple ones.”

And then—and  _ then.  _ Time slows down all at once: the fireplace crackling dies down, the wind outside comes to nearly an abrupt stop, the candles in the cabin all seem to dim at once. The only quickly moving particles in the room are the two of them, held together by atoms upon atoms upon electrons upon electrons of energy. Gravity flips. Matter becomes nothing.

“Tell me one of them, Sylvain,” Felix says, voice so soft that it could make someone cry.

“I—don’t laugh in my face.”

“I’m not going to laugh.”

“Swear on it.”

“I swear that I’m not going to laugh.”

“Do you promise? Because I’ll—”

Felix holds a hand out. “I am not going to laugh at you.”

Sylvain sighs and leans back. He’s being given an opportunity to be honest right now, but he isn’t sure if it’s worth it. There’s no way to tell. There’s no way to predict the future, and there’s certainly no way to predict Felix’s behavior, especially not with the way he’s been acting on the trip so far.

“I fantasize about kissing you when I fall asleep,” he finally blurts. “And in the morning. And while we were swimming in the lake. And right now, too.”

Felix stares at him, mouth open just slightly. Time continues to move slowly. It feels like ages before he speaks again, before he says four words that make him see sparklers behind his eyes: “That would be nice.” 

Sylvain has to check and see whether or not he heard that correctly. “Nice—it would be nice? What would be nice?” 

“You’re ruining the moment,” Felix says, leaning forward again, this time pulling Sylvain forward with him until their lips touch. Felix kisses him slowly, gently, like Sylvain might break into a million tiny pieces at any given moment (which he might just do). This only lasts for so long, of course, because after a short while the two of them deepen the kiss into something more luxurious, more open-mouthed, more breathy, until they have to stop because Felix is drooling.

He wipes it with his sleeve. “Ugh,” he says, “embarrassing.”

Sylvain has no idea what to do, so he laughs. “Not embarrassing. It’s actually kind of flattering.”

“You should not be flattered by me drooling,” Felix mumbles, brushing his hair out of his face.

Sylvain flops back onto the bed, completely satisfied for the rest of his life, probably. Time is starting to catch up with him; it is gradually picking up speed and momentum. Which is fine. He got to have his moment, and now the moment is over, and he’ll remember it forever even if Felix doesn’t— 

“Are you just going to lay there?” Felix is looming, hovering above, eyes narrowed. “We just made out and you’re not going to give any kind of followup?”

“I—well. You got me there.” Sylvain scratches his head. “I was thinking—”

“No, wait. Let me say something first.” Felix’s face has hardened, and it makes Sylvain’s stomach hurt. “I’m not letting you do your typical Sylvain thing with me. I’m not putting up with that. You know that I wouldn’t ever put up with that. So either tell me that this is a one-time, one-kiss thing, or tell me you want to be with me. I’m not settling for you fucking around with me—”

“Okay! Okay. I get it. You can stop verbally beating me now.” He sighs. “What I think is that… ugh, no. Let me start over." Sylvain shakes his head. "I don’t want it to be a one-time thing. I stopped—I don’t want to be like  _ that  _ anymore. Because I like you! So much. I really do. I think about you all the time, you’re like a plague—”

“A  _ plague? _ ”

“A good plague! I—argh. A good plague.” 

“A good plague,” Felix echoes. He lays down, resting his head on Sylvain’s chest. “Fine. I’ll be a good plague.”

“Glad to hear,” Sylvain says, running his fingers through Felix’s hair. He wonders how long this will last. He  _ wants  _ it to last for as long as possible, as long as forever. Because he knows how long he’s  _ felt  _ for Felix, in more than one way, too. He knows. And he doesn’t particularly want to deny himself the feelings, especially if Felix feels the same way. 

He doesn’t want to fuck everything up like he usually does. 

“So—okay. Just want to check. You feel the same way, right?” he asks. 

Felix sits up a little bit and looks down at Sylvain, appearing mildly amused. “Was that not clear when I let you fucking cuddle me to sleep the other day?”

“I just wanted to check!” Sylvain says, raising an accusatory hand. “Just wanted to check. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“Hmph.” How articulate. “Whatever.”

“Whatever,” Sylvain mocks, laughing to himself again because he just can’t help it. Felix is so  _ unagreeable  _ even when he tries to be  _ agreeable.  _ But his efforts do not go unnoticed—at least not by Sylvain. “It’s still pretty early, you know. Want to play chess?”

“Hm.” Pause. Gears turning. “Sure.”

“You can’t be a sore loser when I beat you, though.” 

“I’m not a sore loser.”

Sylvain snorts and pushes himself up off the bed and meanders over to the cabinet. “Sure you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Felix mumbles, but he’s lost his assertiveness. 

Sylvain comes back and drops the chess set onto the bed. He presses a tender kiss to the top of Felix’s head. “Maybe if you beat me you wouldn’t have to be a sore loser.”

Felix puts on another Face. One of determination. “Fine. I’ll win. You’ll see.”

They play four matches, and Felix loses all of them. Sylvain consoles him with a lot of kissing and touching, and they fall asleep together, fireplace crackling in the background. 

* * *

When Sylvain wakes up, Felix is still there, and it is a beautiful, nontragic thing. There is no feeling more comfortable than this one. 

And so, naturally, Sylvain goes back to sleep. 

ACT II: UNCERTAINTY  
— END —  



	3. CLARITY

ACT III: CLARITY

“You put your face against my arm, held me tight, and closed your eyes, and let me see for the both of us. I have never felt so moved by an act of trust.”  
Leonard Cohen, letter to Marianne Ihlen

“We’re going on a hike today,” Felix says once they’ve both properly gotten out of bed. It took them a good amount of dawdling—most of it on Sylvain’s part—but they’re both wearing their day clothes now, and they ate some food, so everything is good. 

Sylvain is sitting on the edge of the bed, chin in his hand, back hunched. “A hike? No offense, Fe, but I’m really not in the mood for walking through a bunch of dead trees and grass.” 

“No offense taken, but you’re still coming on the hike with me.” He sighs. “I can’t keep sitting around reading books.”   
  
Sylvain knew that Felix’s respite wouldn’t last very long. He just isn’t the kind of person that can lounge around for a period longer than twenty four hours, it seems. He has to be doing things constantly, whether that be grumbling or training or hiking. One might find it to be a little worrisome, but that’s just how he is, and it can’t really be changed.

“Fine, fine,” Sylvain says, tone conveying that he doesn’t _actually_ mind going on a hike. He’s got to keep up his attitude, though, just to irritate Felix a tiny bit. “Give me a couple minutes though, would you?”

They aren’t in any particular rush, so Sylvain takes his sweet time getting ready. He knows that Felix is watching him, too, so he takes extra long to put everything on. It takes nearly twice as much time for him to get his boots on as it usually does, and he ties the laces with extreme precariousness, to the point where it becomes arbitrary. All of this slowness is worth it, though, when Sylvain finishes and sees the look on Felix’s face, which can only be described as  _ incredulous. _

“Ready?” Felix asks, muscles in his throat sounding particularly tight.

Sylvain nods. “Very ready.”

They head out of the cabin, weapons in tow ( _ just in case,  _ Felix said) and gloves on and everything. It’s much warmer today than it has been the past few days, which actually isn’t very warm at all, but Sylvain thinks that it’s a nice break from feeling like his face is being burned off thanks to frigid winds. And the sky is as clear as water today; it’s completely blue and without a single cloud.

It must be a sign.

It’s very hard to not look for signs in things, Sylvain thinks, especially when the signs are so coincidentally parallel to events that happen in his life. He remembers searching for signs in things even when he was little. A fleck in his water? Bad sign. A bird chirping outside his window in the morning? Good sign. Wax spilling onto the table from a candle? Bad sign. And so on and so forth.

Sylvain doesn’t particularly like looking back at his childhood and saying  _ I’m the way I am now because of this and that,  _ but he knows that other people certainly do. Especially Dimitri, and especially Felix, though they never spend much time divulging their findings to him. The only reason Sylvain knows that they do this is because he’s heard them talking about it before with one another—which is, admittedly, a surprise in itself.

Sylvain doesn’t want to think about this right now. He also doesn’t want to think about Dimitri right now. He wants to think about this hike, and he wants to think about Felix, and so that is what he’s going to do.

Speaking of Felix—he’s gotten quite the head start walking. They haven’t gone very far from the cabin at all, but he is already a good seven meters away from him. Sylvain might wait for Felix, but Felix won’t wait for anybody at all. 

“Don’t think that,” Sylvain mumbles to himself. He jogs a little bit to catch up to Felix, coming up from behind and placing a hand on his shoulder.

Felix flinches. Sylvain frowns.

“Couldn’t even wait up for me?” he says, voice rather jovial.

“No. You’re too slow.” Pause. “Get your hand off of my shoulder.”   
  
Hm. This isn’t really a good sign. Come to think of it, Felix has been pretty standoffish all morning, even back in the cabin. Sylvain wonders if he regrets what happened last night. In fact, he  _ knows _ that Felix regrets— 

His train of thought stops when Felix hooks an arm around Sylvain’s arm and hugs it close with his other hand.

Man, it seems like Sylvain really needs to put a little more faith into this situation, doesn’t it? More faith to both Felix as well as himself. He can’t already be feeling uncertain about all of this, especially not when he knows how averse Felix is to affection. Or—perhaps not averse. But he only seeks it out when he really wants it and tends to not want to be given it without a warning.

“Clingy,” Sylvain says once his brain processes what’s going on. His face scrunches up, smug.

“I’ll let go,” Felix warns, though he doesn’t make any movement to indicate the legitimacy of this statement.

Sylvain doesn’t know why he feels so… nervous. So anticipatory. All his life he’s been unaffected by dating and unaffected by hooking up and unaffected by all those sorts of things, but now—but  _ now _ —he feels almost completely different. It’s weird, he thinks, to have such genuine feelings for someone else, and it’s nerve-wracking to think that maybe Felix _doesn’t_ feel them back. Or that maybe one day he’ll stop feeling them back. 

It’s sort of an uncharted territory.

And Sylvain doesn’t think that he’s had feelings for Felix his entire life. As romantic and poetic of a story as that might be, he knows that it’s been a very, very slow progression of emotions, like a faucet trickle. It has been both frustrating and frightening to come to terms with it.

He looks to Felix. “Sure you will,” he says, fully confident now that Felix isn’t going to let go. Look at that, his demeanor has changed in a matter of minutes.

“Whatever.”

“ _ Whatever _ ,” Sylvain imitates. He could bend down and kiss Felix right now, he’s so very fond. “Where are we hiking to, by the way?”   
  
“I don’t know. I haven’t been very far in this direction yet. I just figured that we could go uphill for a while and see what’s there and then go back down when we feel like turning around.”   
  
“You’ve definitely got us walking up a steep hill,” Sylvain says. “It’s a good thing that I’m so big and strong and muscular, otherwise my legs would already be hurting.”   
  
He looks to Felix and sees a little baby smile worming its way across his face.

“And a good thing that you’re also so big and strong and muscular,” he adds, feeling cheeky.

Now Felix’s face is turning red, which is exactly the desired effect that Sylvain was looking for. “I know that I’m strong,” he says.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s your whole thing. You’ve very strong, always getting stronger, and I think that the only person in the entire world who could beat you at arm wrestling is Dimitri.”   
  
“Ugh.” Felix sighs. Sylvain realizes that he may have accidentally struck a nerve. “I can’t deny that. I’ve never won against him.”   
  
“Bet that you could beat Nemesis, though.”   
  
“At arm wrestling?”   
  
“At arm wrestling,” Sylvain says. “He’s got nothing on you.”

“I don’t know about that.”   
  
“Have confidence!” Sylvain bumps his shoulder. “You could probably beat me in arm wrestling.”

“I could definitely do that. You have noodle arms.”

Sylvain gasps loudly, trying to sound as affronted as possible. “I do not have noodle arms.”   
  
“Okay, fine, I’m exaggerating. But I could definitely beat you.”

“Want to see if you’re right?”   
  
Felix raises an eyebrow. “Right here?”   
  
“Not right here. When we get back to the cabin, I mean.”   
  
There’s a pause, likely for Felix to consider this proposal. “Sure. But if I win, I get a prize.”   
  
“Ooh, that’s fun. Clearly you have a prize in mind, otherwise you wouldn’t have just said that.” Sylvain laughs. “Usually you just like winning for the feeling. At least, that’s what you act like. But I might be wrong so—”   
  
“Stop it. You’re embarrassing me because you’re right.”

A wide, sunny smile breaks out across Sylvain’s face. “Knew it. Anyway, the prize?”

Another pause follows, this time much longer than the one before. So long, in fact, that Sylvain vaguely wonders if something is wrong. It’s either that or Felix is far too embarrassed to speak. The latter seems more likely. “You okay?”   
  
“I—yes.” Felix shakes his head, as if to clear out his thoughts. “I’ll only tell you if I win.”

Sylvain sighs. “All right, fine. What if I win?”   
  
“Then—I don’t know. Come up with something that you want.”   
  
“Ooookay. But I’m not going to tell you unless I win either, just to keep it fair.”   
  
“That’s fine.”

“Great! Glad you understand.”   
  
The conversation eventually slips away from the two of them and they lapse into a comfortable silence, only disrupted by the sounds of their boots crunching leaves and frozen grass. The sun bears down on them from above, providing minimal warmth, but it’s fine, because they both have a very high immunity to the cold. Plus, Felix’s clinginess is enough to keep the both of them warm enough.

_ Felix’s clinginess.  _ Admittedly, this isn’t something that Sylvain has ever imagined himself saying; if anything, he feels as though he should be the clingy one or something. But it makes sense, when he thinks about it—when he was little, Felix was very clingy. He would walk around with his arms practically permanently attached to Dimitri or Glenn, upset whenever he was separated from the two for longer than a good couple of hours. He would cry and cry and cry when he was left alone, when they were doing something else, and Sylvain remembers sitting there with him, showing him pictures in one of the random children’s books that were often laying around on tables.

Things were much more complicated back then.

At least, this is what Sylvain thinks. Nowadays, life has been composed of just a few things: war, eating, training, war, minimal sleeping. And war encompasses a lot of things, too, ones that not everyone might think about, like washing blood stains out of clothes and replacing ruined boots three times in a month and so on. It’s the little things, Sylvain thinks, that make the bigger, more simpler things so complicated.

Even still, things were more complicated when he was younger.

He’s never found his feelings for Felix to be complicated, though. At least, not in a certain sense. Sylvain has always been aware of his feelings, but couldn’t understand what he was meant to do with them for a while, figuring that it might be best to leave it be. And he did, for a while, and let it caramelize in his brain until the sugar-feelings burnt and left his metal-pot-brain sticky and charred. 

You can only ignore something like that for so long.

It’s still sinking in a little bit. It’s still sinking in that Felix has his arms hooked around Sylvain’s arm, it’s still sinking in that he can now stare at him in the morning, long hair falling over his shoulders, and it’s still sinking in that he can kiss his hands and his forehead and wherever else he wants to, really.

Good things never seem to happen to Sylvain. He feels as though this might be temporary. That’s not a good thought to dwell on.

He knows that it isn’t. All of this self deprecation has left his brain muddled, perhaps fairly so. The most unfortunate part is that he doesn’t know how to go about fixing it. 

“Hey, do your boots have any mud coating left on them?” Sylvain asks, because he wants to think about something else before his skull starts splitting.

“Not really,” Felix says. “You got most of it off when you washed them in the pond. I picked the rest off with a scrap of metal I found in the back of the cabin.”

“That doesn’t sound safe.”   
  
“It was as safe as I was going to get it, and I didn’t really care because I wanted the mud to get out before it got crumbly and flaky. Also, I don’t think that you can be one to talk about safety.”

Sylvain poorly feigns obliviousness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”   
  
“Does the other day when you nearly poisoned yourself with berries ring a bell? Or how about every single time you went into battle and I had to keep my eyes fixed on the back of your head to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid?”   
  
“Whoa, you seem, uh, mad.” He feels bad about it. “I didn’t realize it upset you that much.”

Felix rubs his eyes with one of his hands and sighs. “I didn’t mean to get so angry.” Pause. “I know that everybody thinks of me as some heartless slab of stone, but I do have the capacity to worry about people.”

Sylvain’s face falls. Sometimes he forgets that Felix is at least somewhat self-aware of his at times grisly personality. “I know,” he says, voice light.

“Anyway, I just—” He shakes his head and sighs. “—I can’t lose any more people.”

The tone of their conversation has significantly shifted and, for a moment, he wonders if Felix will cry. The more logical side of himself knows that this will still not happen. “Right,” he says. “Sorry. I know that I should be less careless.”

“You should,” Felix agrees, nodding his head. “You make everybody concerned and you don’t even notice it.”   
  
“Hey, I notice it!” Sylvain is lying. “There’s just something wrong with me.”   
  
Felix stops walking and lets go of Sylvain’s arm. 

He turns to face him. His facial expression is a mixture of frustration and of something softer, something sadder that can be seen around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. Subtle, barely there, but still expressed. “Don’t say it like that.”   
  
“I mean, you can’t really deny it, can you?”

Felix kicks his foot against the dirt and mud underneath him and sighs. His worries his lip, clearly searching for words, likely having a hard time finding them. “There’s something wrong with all of us,” he mumbles. “It’s not just you.”

“Hm.” Sylvain hates when Felix is right, but he still isn’t going to retract or rephrase his statement. “How so?”

“You know  _ how so _ , don’t even give me that nonsense. You know, and I know, and everybody else knows. Half of—half of the entire now-broken up student body is now permanently scarred from seeing piles of dead bodies, the other half was put out of their misery, and a couple others have—”   
  
Sylvain doesn’t really want to hear the rest of whatever that statement is—he didn’t want to hear any of it, truthfully, but Felix is too harsh to care about that one way or another—and so he simply puts his hand over Felix’s mouth. It works instantly; he stops talking and frowns.

He also shoves Sylvain’s hand away. “What was that for?”   
  
“I don’t feel like talking about death anymore, no offense.” Sylvain extends his arm out to Felix, an offer. “I understood your point. But I don't want to talk about it. I don’t think that you really want to, either.”

Felix swallows hard and looks at Sylvain’s arm. His eyes flicker to the ground, then, almost in shame, and then back to the arm again, which he finally takes and holds close. “Sorry,” he says.

“It’s fine. Let’s talk about something else, like this hike.”

“Like this hike,” Felix echoes, sighing again. “Okay. What about it?”

“We’ve walked pretty far. Don’t you think we should head back eventually? I don’t really want to get lost.”

“Mm.” Sylvain can hear Felix thinking. “Not yet, but soon. I want to keep walking.”   
  
“Okay, well. Let me know if you want me to carry you.”   
  
Felix shoves Sylvain in the side and it makes him laugh. “I’m kidding!”

“Whatever.” The word is mumbled, because Felix has turned his face away to blush or do whatever it is that he needs to do.

* * *

They hike for a while until Sylvain starts moping about his legs hurting (which they don’t; he’s more concerned about getting lost). The walk back is nice—they have an expansive view of the sunrise, orange and pink and yellow colors all blending into one another on the horizon. It bathes everything around them in a golden color and leaves a gentle silence on the trees.

They don’t talk much because there isn’t really any need for it. 

Sylvain hasn’t ever been one to enjoy silences, but he thinks that maybe—just maybe—he can get used to ones like these. Felix is someone who doesn’t always feel the need to talk all the time, which is very much unlike Sylvain. But maybe it’s a good thing; maybe this will give him an opportunity to step outside of his comfort zone, so long as Felix is willing to do the same.

By the time they get back from their hours-long hike, the sun has completely escaped from the sky. They do a couple of maintenancey things—taking care of the horses, making food, getting water, lighting more fires and so on—and then they’re done for the day. Mostly done, anyway.

Felix takes a bath. He disappears into the little bathroom section of the cabin, shuts the door and stays in there for a good long while. Sylvain can see steam escaping out from the bottom of the door, which is both a testament to how hot Felix likes his water to be as well as to how cold the cabin is even with all of the fires. 

Sylvain waits patiently for him on the edge of the bed, finishing the fish that they had made a short while ago so as not to waste any of it. They’re doing pretty good with the food business, all things considered. Sylvain isn’t a great cook and Felix isn’t a great cook, but they’ve brought along enough food to make it work best they can. And Sylvain doesn’t really care about how good or bad the food is, truthfully, he’s just glad that he finally has a break from… everything and everybody.

They’re going to have to go back to Garreg Mach soon. Sylvain knows that they can’t ignore cleanup and rebuilding and residual battles forever. He wishes that he could, but he knows that this is completely unviable. 

He sighs. He’s going to enjoy the rest of his time here, and then he can bemoan the fact that there are still plenty of things to do at a later date.

Speaking of things to do—Sylvain hasn’t forgotten about their arm wrestling match. In fact, he’s even set up the table for it; he’s moved it out from the wall corner and placed two chairs opposite each other for them to sit down in. Maybe he’s being a little serious about it, but he’s genuinely curious to see who’s going to win. 

After a few more minutes, Felix emerges from the bathroom, swinging the wooden door against the wall so hard that it nearly bounces back. 

Sylvain thinks that he’s going to die again. Felix’s hair, wet and ever so long, blankets itself over his shoulders and slightly down his chest and back. Sylvain can practically see all of the small droplets of water that drip down his body and onto the towel wrapped around his waist. And he can definitely see the way that Felix’s cheeks have gone all pink, likely from both the steam and from Sylvain’s immediate wandering eyes.

He finds his tongue in his mouth. “Let me brush it.”   
  
Felix immediately looks affronted. He raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Your hair,” Sylvain clarifies. “Let me brush it for you.”

“Oh. Well, okay.” 

“Sit on a chair.” Sylvain stands up and gestures at one of their designated arm wrestling chairs, pulling it out from the table slightly. Felix does as he is told and sits in the chair, towel and all, apparently not bothering to change into his night clothes.

That’s fine. Sylvain thinks that this is fine. He gathers all of Felix’s hair into his hands and lets it fall down his back. He takes a moment to search for the brush, which is buried in a bag somewhere, and grips it hard in his hand when he finds it, as if it’s the only thing keeping him together. 

His grip loosens, though, when he gets back to Felix. He runs the brush through his hair and it moves easily; clearly Felix is good at taking care of it because Sylvain doesn’t come across any knots. “So long,” he says.

“We’ve already had this conversation before.”   
  
“I’m just saying it again.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that you’ve already said it before.”   
  
“Doesn’t change the fact that I don’t care that I’ve said it before.” Sylvain sighs and sets the brush down. “There. Do you want it tied up?”   
  
“Yeah.” Felix pulls a rubber band off of his wrist and hands it back to Sylvain, who takes it and puts Felix’s hair into a loose ponytail. “Thanks.”

“Don’t stand up just yet, though,” Sylvain says, putting a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “We’re going to arm wrestle, remember?”

“You’re not even going to let me change into some clothes?”   
  
“Nope. Not until there’s a winner.” Sylvain moves to sit down on the chair opposite of Felix, leaning forward on the table. “Are you mentally prepared?”

“Whatever. Sure.” Felix sticks his elbow onto the table, reaching out for Sylvain’s hand. “I don’t need to prepare anything because I’m going to beat you.”

“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that.” Sylvain takes Felix’s hand in his own and reaches out with his other hand to hold Felix’s elbow in place, who does the same for Sylvain. 

“On three,” Felix says.

“On three. One, two, three—”   
  
Sylvain barely gets to say the word three before he feels a weight shoving his arm to the side. Goddess be damned, Felix is strong, stronger than Sylvain remembers him being, stronger that he usually is when they fight on the training grounds, where Sylvain sometimes gets the upper hand and wins in their little matches. This is totally different; he immediately knows that he is not, in fact, going to win. There’s hardly any chance of it.

Nevertheless, he still tries to shove back in an effort to show that he can at least hold off his loss for a couple extra seconds. He’s also definitely not looking at the way that Felix’s biceps flex because of all the strain he’s putting on his arm muscles. Definitely, definitely not.

He knows that there’s no way of him turning this around. In hindsight, he should have waited for Felix to get back into his nightclothes, because Sylvain finds himself facing a lot of disadvantages. No matter how much pressure he puts against Felix’s arm, it doesn’t move, and he’s always halfway to being pushed against the table. At least it’s Felix and not Dimitri, though; if it were Dimitri, Sylvain thinks that his entire body would be slammed into the table, and that’s barely and exaggeration.

He wonders if he should accept defeat. That would probably piss Felix off, though, and Sylvain knows that it’s the easy way out, so he keeps trying, keeps pushing back against that weight for what feels like hours and hours. The two of them don’t speak, they don’t even look at each other—they just stare at their hands.

Sylvain blinks and suddenly his arm is pressed against the table. A loss.

“Damn,” he says, pulling his arm back and rubbing at his muscles. “I didn’t stand a chance.”   
  
“I told you I’d win,” Felix says, leaning back in his chair a little bit, aura haughty as he folds his arms across his chest.

“Yeah, whatever. I knew you were strong already. But there’s plenty of things that I can beat you at!”

“Like what?”

“I’ve won in sparring matches, for one. And I’m definitely less of a picky eater than you are.”   
  
Felix frowns. “That isn’t beating me at anything.”   
  
“Yes it is.”   
  
“No it isn’t.”   
  
“Yes it is, because I’m saying that it is.”

“I’m going to agree to disagree because this is a stupid conversation.”   
  
Sylvain laughs, running a hand through his hair absentmindedly. “Okay, yeah. Anyway… what’s your special chosen prize?”

Sylvain knows immediately that Felix has been thinking about this because of the way that his face flushes an intense red color. It’s a bit unlucky—for someone who tries so hard to act indifferent to everything, he has absolutely no control over his facial expressions, particularly when he’s embarrassed. 

“Let’s just forget about that,” he mumbles.

“No, Fe, come on.” Sylvain leans forward. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, seriously. I’m not gonna pressure you, but it’s just me, y’know.”   
  
“Just you,” Felix echoes. His face hardens, and then it softens, and then he looks into Sylvain’s eyes and says his request and Sylvain very nearly laughs again. He stands up and hauls Felix to his feet—his face is still red—and proceeds to lead him to the bed, sitting him down on the edge and taking a seat beside him. 

“You’re very endearing when you’re embarrassed,” he says, plainly.

“Shut up.” Felix is mumbling again, probably because he’s covering up his face with his hands, which he only does when he’s really,  _ really _ embarrassed. Sylvain knows this because he’s only done it once before.

“Okay. But you do have to look at me.”   
  
Felix removes his hands. “Why?”

“Because I want you to,” Sylvain says, reaching up to comb his fingers through Felix’s wet hair. He draws him in for a long, luxurious kiss, one that starts off so chaste that it almost isn’t fitting for them until it becomes something deeper. Sylvain licks into Felix’s mouth, one hand still in his hair, the other hand by his hip, holding him steady.

They break apart. “If you’re going to do it then get a move on.”   
  
“So impatient,” Sylvain says, but he moves onto his knees in front of Felix anyway because he’s feeling particularly obedient today.

His hands slide up Felix’s wonderful, slender legs, and he presses a kiss to his knee, delicate and gentle and full of sudden adoration. “Felix,” he whispers, “how long have you thought about this?”   
  
“I’m not—I’m not answering that.”

“Oh, come on.” Sylvain smirks. “Don’t you think I deserve to know?”   
  
“Um.” Felix is quiet for a moment. “A while, maybe.”

“ _ Maybe? _ ”

“A while, definitely,” he amends. 

“I’ll take that for now.” Sylvain sighs, thoughtful, and pulls Felix’s legs apart, letting his hands roam. “But don’t think that I won’t ask again later.”   
  
“Sylvain, my body is going to melt if you don’t hurry up.”   
  
Sylvain does laugh again this time around. He situates himself a little more comfortably and reaches for the towel, pulling it off when Felix lifts his hips. “Anything for you,” he whispers.

* * *

It’s late. 

They’re both still awake. Everything else is asleep. Bugs, birds, animals—it’s just the two of them and the sound of the wind outside. It taps a twig against the side of the cabin,  _ tiptiptiptip. _

“Who do you think lived here before?” Felix asks. He’s laying on Sylvain’s chest, and he can feel the way that his jaw moves as he speaks against his skin.

“Dunno. I’ve always imagined it as something that someone built to help people during the war. I guess it got abandoned near the end.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

“That’s the only explanation that I could come up with that wasn’t depressing, anyway.” He sniffles. “Why are you thinking about that?”

“It just seems very… convenient.”   
  
“I guess so. But I don’t think anyone has set this up to murder us, if I’m being honest.”   
  
Felix scoffs. “That’s not what I meant by convenient. It’s—it’s just a perfect setup for someone to do something like… this.”   
  
“‘Running away,’ you mean?” Sylvain puts  _ running away  _ in air quotes.

“Yeah,” Felix says, voice quiet. He pauses and then sighs. “I don’t want to go back.”   
  
Sylvain wonders if he’s heard that wrong, because it doesn’t seem like something that Felix would say. “You don’t?”

“It’s miserable back there,” he explains. “It’s miserable everywhere. But it’s not miserable here beyond the weather.”

“I didn’t know that you felt like that.”   
  
“Yeah, well. Now you do. There’s nothing that can be done about it.” 

“When we go back, we can try making it less miserable,” Sylvain says, trying to be hopeful. He isn’t sure how much he believes his words. “If you want.”   
  
“I guess.” Felix doesn’t sound convinced. “I’m going to sleep now. Goodnight.”

Sylvain pets Felix’s head. “Goodnight,” he says, quiet.

He wonders how long Felix has been unhappy.

* * *

They wake up very, very late the next morning; Sylvain wonders if this is the latest that Felix has ever woken up, because when he looks out the window and realizes how high the sun is in the sky, his eyes widen.

“This is going to ruin my sleep schedule,” he mumbles, looking out the window.

“I’m sure that you can easily fix it,” Sylvain says. “Just tire yourself out a lot.”   
  
“Tire myself out.” Felix makes a  _ hmm  _ sound. “How?”   
  
“Well, we can spar, if you want. We haven’t actually done that yet, and I feel like it’s something that we should have done by now.”

Felix is silent, for a moment, contemplative, and then he turns away from the window. “Yeah, okay. Let’s spar.”

And so they do. They spar for the rest of the day, nonstop, changing weapons every now and then and taking breaks only to eat and drink. Sylvain hadn’t realized how serious Felix was about fixing his sleep schedule (that, by the way, had barely been ruined anyway because Sylvain has a feeling that waking up so late is likely to only be a one-time thing for Felix), but he’s definitely aware of it now.

It’s fine, though. It gives Sylvain a good excuse to get to see Felix all sweaty and worked up, and it gives him an even better excuse to run his hands all over his muscles later tonight. And—besides that—it feels really good to spar again. They never had much fun with their sparring during the war because it felt as though they could only spar for businesslike reasons. It was never for enjoyment. It couldn’t ever be for enjoyment.

Which is why this feels like they’re back to old times again. More carefree. More freedom to move and speak the way that they want to, with little regard for how things should be. Sylvain feels really good, doing this, under the light of the sun, only interrupted when it occasionally passed above a cloud. 

It reminds Sylvain of being younger. The good part of when he was younger, too—when he was old enough to make his own decisions but not old enough to be as sad as he is now. He’s never been particularly happy, but—he does think that he used to feel better than he does now.

And it’s not like he can pinpoint exactly how he feels nowadays anyway. It’s a blur of mush and gravel accompanied by the smell of kerosine, heavy on his brain when he has time to think about himself. It’s… bothersome, to say the least.

But in this moment, right now with Felix, he feels good, and that is what is important. 

By the time they finish sparring, Sylvain has convinced Felix to go swim in the cold pond again. They strip down to nothing but their underwear, and float on their backs and stare at the sky until there are so many overhead grey clouds that it begins to rain. When they emerge from the water, their fingers and toes and brains are properly pruny, and continue to be so as they stumble into the cabin, clothes tucked under their arms.

They deposit the clothes onto a chair. Sylvain immediately sits down.

“My body feels like jelly,” he says, holding up a shaking hand to prove his point. “And I really need a bath.”

“Take a bath, then,” Felix says, undoing his hair. “Nothing is stopping you.”   
  
“But  _ Felix. _ ”   
  
“What?”   
  
“It’s so much effort.” Sylvain lays down on the bed and dramatically drapes his arm over his forehead like a wounded maiden. “I’m too tired.”   
  
Felix sighs. “I am not running a bath for you, if that’s what you’re trying to ask for.” 

“Not even for _me_?”

“I’m not doing it,” he says again, but then he opens the door to the bathroom and disappears inside. After a moment, the sound of water fills up the air.

Felix emerges minutes later.

“You have to wonder how the bath still works,” Sylvain says, standing up from the bed. “What with the cabin being abandoned and all that.”   
  
“Magic, probably,” Felix mumbles. “Also,  _ you’re welcome. _ ”   
  
“Right, right. Thank you so much. I appreciate the effort.” He kisses Felix on the forehead and ruffles his hair a little bit. “I’ll be right back. Try not to miss me.”   
  
The last thing Sylvain hears before he closes the door is a grumbling sound.

It’s pretty good luck that the water here still functions, because if it didn’t, they would have a lot of problems. Although Sylvain is hesitant to actually drink this stuff unpurified, he’s at least glad that they have a way to bathe, because otherwise this trip would be a lot shorter and a lot grosser.

He strips out of his underwear and sits down in the tub, leaning his head back against the edge and staring up at the wooden ceiling.

It’s comfortable and it’s quiet. Sylvain definitely feels like he could fall asleep right here if he kept his eyes closed long enough. The only thing stopping him is the threat of becoming even more pruny than he already is. 

As he washes himself, Sylvain thinks about… some things. He thinks about Felix, mainly, but he also thinks about Dimitri a little bit, and he thinks about his father, and he thinks about Felix’s father, too, among other adult figures. He wonders how Felix has been coping with so much loss in his life. He wonders how much he must be trying to act like nothing's wrong.

It’s frustrating. It’s frustrating because Sylvain is a hypocrite and does the exact same thing, so he feels like he doesn’t have much authority to approach Felix on the subject. But at the same time, he wants to make sure that he’s okay. That he isn’t hurting himself by holding emotions in.

He sighs, feeling agonized, and finishes washing his hair. Maybe it’s a good idea to talk to Felix about those things. Sylvain has a lot of questions for him, truthfully, ones that he has been holding in for a long time. Tonight he should ask some of them.

Sylvain stands up in the tub, full of a new resolve, and steps onto the floor. He pulls the plug in the bath and dries himself off with a towel. By the time he puts his underclothing back on, the water has completely drained away, and he is still feeling good.

When he exits the bathroom, he is mildly charmed by what he finds.

Felix is there, laying on the bed, definitely asleep. He’s tucked himself under the blankets—no doubt cold from the pondwater—and his nose is all scrunched up cutely. Sylvain pads over to him and lays a hand on his head.

“Don’t fall asleep now,” he says softly, bending down. “Or else you’ll screw your sleep up in an entirely different way.”   
  
Felix says nothing.

Sylvain shakes his shoulder a little bit. “Fe. Come on.”   
  
Felix opens his eyes.

Sylvain stops shaking his shoulder. “Hey there.”   
  
“I wasn’t—I wasn’t sleeping,” Felix mumbles, voice slurred with his exhaustion. Sylvain laughs at him, openly, and Felix laughs back for some reason, brain probably foggy from his brief resr. 

“Sure you weren’t. Sit up and I’ll make you food,” Sylvain says, pulling Felix up into a seated position.

He smiles at him one last time before he begins searching through the kitchen area. 

* * *

The days feel like they’ve been getting shorter and shorter and Sylvain doesn’t know whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing. 

On one hand, it’s good that time passes by quickly because it’s a sign that he’s been enjoying himself. On the other hand, though, it’s bad that time is going by so quickly because it means that they have to return to Garreg Mach soon. They cannot keep hiding from their problems forever, despite how much Sylvain wants to. And how much Felix wants to as well, apparently.

They only have a few days left.

Felix wakes up early the morning after Sylvain’s bath and goes out to hunt. Sylvain lays in bed and goes back to sleep, because he’s not about to waste the extra time in bed that he has so generously been granted. He finds himself drifting in and out of sleep, oscillating between drearily looking at the cabin wall and watching himself eat flowers in his dream world.

It’s back to work once this is over. Sylvain has accidentally been spoiling himself with all of this lounging around stuff, but it’s nice to have a break after five years pass without one. 

He’s still eating flowers in his dream when Felix returns to the cabin. Sylvain keeps his eyes shut, pretending to sleep, just to see what Felix does.

There’s a bit of shuffling around accompanied by the sound of some clothes being taken off and a sword thunking against the wall, and then there is silence. It only lasts a moment, though, and then Felix is sitting (presumably) on the edge of the bed. Sylvain can feel a hand in his hair, then feels it slide to his cheek, unmoving, until it is suddenly removed. 

He has a brief internal debate as to whether he should continue pretending to be asleep or if he should sit up and exclaim that he is awake. Sylvain decides on the latter, but in a less intense fashion.

“Hey,” he says, opening up one eye.

Felix crosses his arms over his chest. “Why are you still laying in bed.”   
  
“Because I’m allowed to,” Sylvain says. “Stop hassling me about finally being able to sleep in a little bit, would you? You’re stressing me out.”   
  
The frown lines on Felix’s face harden in a way that makes his nose wrinkle. It’s very cute. “I’m not stressing you out. Stop being so dramatic.”

“Yeah, whatever. Come back to bed with me, won’t you?”

“How can you possibly sleep even more than you already have?”   
  
Sylvain sighs. “I think that I could sleep until the end of humanity, Felix.”

Felix worries his lip, and it looks like he wants to say something, but then he crawls into bed and takes his spot by the window. When Sylvian turns around to look at him, he notes how windy it is outside. “Were you cold out there?”   
  
“Haven’t we been over this a dozen times? We both have ridiculous resistances to the cold.”   
  
“Okay, yeah, but were you cold?” Sylvain raises an eyebrow.

“Maybe a little bit,” Felix mumbles, burying his face deep into a pillow. 

“Just because we have a resistance to the cold doesn’t make us entirely impervious to it, you know.”

Felix rolls onto his back and spreads his arms out, one arm flopping onto Sylvain’s stomach. “I know,” he says, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “But it’s nice to pretend that we are.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. It makes me feel special.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow again. “How do you mean?”

“It’s stupid. It just makes me feel like I have something to show for. We spent so much time together when we were little in the snow, and a resistance to the cold is…” He makes a grasping motion with his hand. “It makes the memories tangible.”

Huh. For someone like Felix, that was weirdly… reminiscent. And in a good way, too, not in a sad way, which is his usual go-to. “Do they have to be tangible for them to be meaningful?” Sylvain asks, tentative. 

“I guess not. But for me… I prefer it.” He sighs. “When people die, you eventually forget how they used to act when they were alive. You can’t remember. No matter how many conversations and interactions you go over in your head, you’ll never remember it precisely. And the dead don’t change with time, unlike everybody else. You can only preserve your memories with them.”

A heavy silence follows Felix’s words, and Sylvain reaches to hold the hand on his stomach. It’s not frequent that he’s so open like this, so willing to share things that make him vulnerable. 

Sylvain chooses his next words carefully. “I can understand where you’re coming from,” he says. “You know this, but I didn’t have a ton of—uh, I didn’t have a ton of happy memories from childhood when I wasn’t with you and Dimitri and Ingrid. So I really hold onto the memories I had with you guys. But you’re not—“

“We’re not dead,” Felix finishes for him, voice flat. 

“Right, you’re not dead. But the memories I have with—with Glenn, for example—I understand that feeling. I still have all the birthday notes he gave me. I have it all in this little box under my bed in the dorms. I took them with me.”

“You didn’t leave them back at Gautier?”

“It felt wrong to do that,” Sylvain says, frowning. “Uh, anyway—what I was saying was that I understand your way of thinking. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s good to be obsessing over the dead like that. You of all people should know that, considering how much you—no offense—were a dick to Dimitri about it.”

“I know that I’m—that I was a dick. But I apologized. I don’t want to talk about Dimitri right now, but I know that you’re right about the memories thing. I just don’t want to admit to it.”

“I don’t want you to drive yourself crazy thinking about memories of the dead,” Sylvain says, lifting Felix’s hand to his mouth and pressing a kiss against it. “I don’t want to be annoying about it, I’m just concerned.”

“I know. I don’t obsess over it, though, I promise. It’s only thinking. I wouldn’t ever go farther than that.” Pause. “But you know that.”

“Yeah, I guess that I’m being overly worried,” Sylvain mumbles, suddenly self conscious. He rolls over onto his side to get a better look at Felix. “Can I ask you something semi-related?”

Felix turns over on his side, too, so that they’re looking at each other. “Sure.”

“Er, well. I guess that saying this is related is sort of a stretch, now that I think about it, but whatever.”

“Get on with it, Sylvain.”

“Okay, yeah. I was just wondering how long you’ve had feelings for me.”

“I don’t—“

“Don’t even try steering your way out of an answer, because I'll hit you with a pillow if you do that.”

“Calm down. I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that I don’t really know.”

“You don’t even have a general idea?” Sylvain asks, resting a hand on Felix’s cheek, running his thumb over the skin under his eyes, over the slightly dark circles there. “Don’t be all bashful.”

“I’m not bashful,” Felix says quickly, scrunching his face up. “I guess for a few months, at least. Maybe a year. I tried not to think about it too much. Because if I did think about it too much, and then if you died, that would cause a lot of problems.”

Sylvain feels selfish for never considering that. He’s always been so painfully reckless—so willing to put himself in danger for the sake of other things, and not even in a heroic manner. Sylvain outs himself in danger simply because he has no regard for his own health and safety. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t think that it matters, and so on. 

“Right,” he says, voice quiet. “That would definitely cause problems.”

“I suppose that you could say that I was waiting for you,” Felix whispers. A smile curls itself onto his lips, and the sight alone is enough to dispel the heavy sadness settling into the room. 

“Aw, Fe. You’re gonna make me blush.”

“That would be a first.”

Sylvain laughs. “I’m very difficult to ruffle, as you know. You should smile some more, because I think that’s one of the few things that really gets to me. Deep in my emotions.”

“Deep in your emotions,” Felix mocks, and Sylvain laughs again. He runs a gentle hand through Felix’s hair and wonders if he’ll melt into the blankets when he feels Felix lean into his touch. 

“Deep in my emotions,” Sylvain repeats. “And just for the record, I think it’s… sort of the same for me. Sort of. I didn’t realize how exactly I felt until we came here, because I’ve been so busy thinking about blood and battle tactics and whatever.”

“Hm.” Felix pauses. “I could tell. You did a lot of staring at me, with eyes wide like an insect’s.”

“Gee, okay. So flattering.”

“I’m just telling you how it is.”

Even more laughter from Sylvain. With a little bit of finagling, he manages to pull Felix into his arms, embracing his cold skin and pressing his lips to his forehead. “We’ll figure it out,” he says quietly. 

“Yeah. I mean—I don’t want to fuck up.”

“We’ve known each other for too long to fuck up. We owe it to ourselves.”

“Yeah,” Felix says again. “Can we stop being so serious now? I’m getting acid reflux from it.”

“No offense, Felix, but out of the two of us you’re the one who is nearly  _ always  _ serious.”

Felix picks up the pillow under his arm and reaches back to whump Sylvain on the head with it. “I’m in a rare mood.”

“Then let’s nap, Mr. Rare Mood,” Sylvain says, shoving the pillow out of his face. “You deserve one.”

“I deserve one,” Felix mutters. 

This is the last thing Sylvain remembers him saying before they slip into sleep. He dreams of nothing.

* * *

All good things must come to an end.

This is what Dimitri will probably say to Sylvain, anyway, when he explains to His Highness where he and Felix have been all this time. He will say his little piece, facial expression betraying his words, and will pat Sylvain on the shoulder once and then go back to stressing himself out. 

In the spirit of rare moods, Sylvain will play out this conversation in his head right now as opposed to later on when he physically sees Dimitri. That way, he can get it over earlier, and will be able to spend less time moping about the fact that yes, all good things must come to an end. And at the same time, he will feel smug about himself, because perhaps it’s not true that  _ all  _ good things end. 

There are some exceptions to that rule.

Felix is a good thing. Felix is a very, very good thing, which is ironic, perhaps, considering his tendency to be sharp and harsh and aloof. Under all that sharpness, though, is the sort of person who has a heart that shines like an emerald. Not gold—he would call gold tacky or unappealing or something. 

Nevertheless, Felix is a good thing, and Sylvain hopes that he will continue to be a good thing for as long as they know one another and for as long as they remember one another. Felix is something to hold onto, something to grip tightly when everything feels as though it has changed for the worse. He is something to look at when it feels like everything is falling apart.

And it doesn’t necessarily feel like everything is falling apart now that they have to pack all of their items for the trip back to Garreg Mach, but it sure does seem like it  _ could _ be. The truth of the situation is that they’re starting to run too low on food to continue to live here comfortably, and also: responsibilities still exist. Sylvain has them, Felix  _ really  _ has them, and they can’t pretend to hide away forever.

The night before they left they packed in silence. It was a heavy silence, a somber one, one that could be trapped in a bottle and labeled and stored away. This cabin had become such a source of comfort and safety—at least, it felt this way for Sylvain—that leaving it felt like a dishonor to themselves and to the relationship they’ve built up. 

“We can come back here,” Felix had told him, putting a kind hand on his shoulder. “If you want to, we can come back.”

Hearing this had made Sylvain feel a little better. “Yeah, okay,” he had said, flashing a too-happy smile. “That would be nice.”

A pause. 

“Try not to be… too sad,” Felix added, voice quieter. 

And so Sylvain tried. He tried and he tries and he tried and continues to try, every day, for all of his life. But hearing it from Felix is different—because hearing anything from Felix is different. It was a short six words; it was a sentence that, had it come from anybody else, would have made Sylvain mad. 

But he knows that Felix was talking more to himself than to Sylvain when he said  _ try not to be too sad.  _ That’s what made it different. 

They leave early in the morning, before the sun has risen. They make the bed and replenish the firewood just because it feels necessary; it feels like a way to repay the cabin. They shut the door on their way out quietly and look at one another, eyes heavy with sleep, and then at the sky. 

Sylvain sighs. 

“Hopefully the weather won’t be bad today,” he says as they trekk to the back of the cabin, where the horses have been staying. “Wouldn’t want another repeat of the muddy boot incident.”

“Don’t remind me,” Felix mumbles, mounting his horse with a strained sound. 

They set off in the darkness, and the darkness eventually becomes lights and shadows and soon they find themselves at midday, still traveling. They stop for their breaks, and talk about the weather some more, and Felix shields his eyes from the sun when they sit and eat together. 

The midday eventually morphs into the evening, and soon enough, they can see Garreg Mach in the distance, resting under a wash of color. 

Sylvain thinks about some things as they stare at the cathedral. 

Life is not going to be easy, he decides. Life has never been easy, he knows this, but it's not going to get any easier now that the war is over. The war, funny as it sounds, was like a cushion for Sylvain in that it stopped the flow of time properly. Now that time is resuming its correct movement, he realizes that he no longer has the cushion of battle and blood. 

He only has himself, and he has Felix. 

And things with Felix—speaking of him—aren’t going to be easy either. It’s strange, really, recognizing that you have immense, deep emotions for a friend you have known your entire life, and it’s even stranger trying to navigate the reciprocated feelings. There is, all-in-all, a lot of strangeness, and a lot of work that needs to be done. 

But when Sylvain looks at Felix, he knows that he is in good hands. He knows that he has made a good decision, as rocky of one it may be. And although Sylvain has loved Felix all his life, it is a much different kind of love now. It is marked by softer touches, a more gentle voice, tentative words and inexplicable honesty and kindness. 

It is the love that Sylvain has been looking for his entire life. 

And he has no doubts about the existence of this love, either. Because when he looks at Felix—whose eyes are as deep as the planet, focused, knowing—he can tell that he is loved. He can tell. 

He will hold onto this feeling until the end of time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your patience waiting for the final chapter, and thank you for reading!
> 
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> note: yes, I know that sylvain can use fire magic in-game. but for plot purposes he can't in this fic here!
> 
> thanks for reading! feel free to [follow me on twitter](https://twitter.com/bloomedvillain) if you like


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